MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry

Nintendo has confirmed that its next two smartphone titles will be free-to-play. Smartphone outings for Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem were confirmed last month. Now Wall Street Journal reports that both DeNA chief executive Isao Moriyasu and a Nintendo spokesperson have confirmed that both will be free to download. Nintendo’s …

Stainless Games’ Carmageddon returns next month with a new console title that promises the most impressive vehicular destruction since the car combat series debuted almost two decades ago. James Batchelor straps in to find out how the game’s steel-shredding effects were accomplished

’90 per cent’ of interested parties walked away when Microsoft refused to sell Fable IP, sources claim

Space strategy title Stellaris has been an instant hit for publisher Paradox Interactive. The game has in its first 24 hours on sale sold over 200,000 units. That’s actually slightly short of the 250k copies sold by Paradox’s former release Cities: Skylines, but Stellaris’ higher price means that it represents …

Development often sacrifices narrative strength at the altar of technical achievement, leaving titles with clichéd plots and lifeless dialogue in favour of visual panache and mechanical complexity. Writer Steven-Elliot Altman reveals how studios can give games a story worth telling once again

EA has said that a sequel to Star Wars: Battlefront will be released in 2017. Its enthusiasm is undoubtedly buoyed by the success of the first game, which in EA’s last financial year (ending March 31st) saw 14m copies shipped. That’s well ahead of the 13m EA forecast back in …

Support for AMD Freesync and Nvidia G-Sync also added

Intel Developer Blog: How the firm is making it easier for developers to build projects around a wider range of devices

Nearly 300 staff laid off at creator of toy-to-life series, with Disney Interactive to no longer self-publish games

It may be the biggest name in movies, but Disney’s failure in video games is now complete. Despite some initial video game investment back in 2007/2008 (resulting in the poor selling Turok and Split/Second), Disney has struggled to match the success of rival Warner Bros. It cancelled most of its …