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

Konami says it is closing the gap between its PES series and EA’s football blockbuster, FIFA. Speaking to MCV, the publisher said it wants to be the industry leader in terms of soccer titles. Reviews for PES 2016 are now out, with critics praising the title. We’re definitely catching up …

Consumers who pre-order spend twice as much on games as the average player. Research firm Kantar Worldpanel says that consumers who pre-order spend – on average – 235 on games a year. The statistic acts as a warning to publishers following recent consumer dissatisfaction over pre-order issues. These have included …

Deep Silver has confirmed that Early Access MOBA Dead Island: Epidemic will be killed off next month. This means that those who paid 29.99 for the starter pack, which included a number of items to be delivered upon the game’s official launch, will never receive their goods. The publisher has …

Zavvi’s parent company The Hut Group has restructured its games and tech team, with key new recruits. Former senior buyer Mike Fethers will lead the new team as head of technology and games. He is joined by Martyn Plant, who has been appointed junior buyer. Plant has been part of …

The first publishers have added their support to MCV’s call for more digital download data. The Digital Counts campaign launched three weeks ago, calling on publishers and digital retailers to share their figures in-order to create an accurate games chart. Currently, only games sold in boxes are included in the …

Space Ape Games and Datascope also win places in the Top 3

After a quiet 2014, Capcom has come out swinging this year with a busy slate of releases. MCV catches up with its new European bossKatsuhiko Ichii and marketing director Antoine Molant to see how Capcom’s year has been so far, and finds out about its big plans for Street Fighter …

Major games this Christmas could launch with crippling bugs, just like in 2014. That’s the warning from leading games testing firms, who insist too many publishers have not learnt their lessons from Q4 last year, which saw a number of titles arriving with game-breaking issues, such as Halo: The Master …

The wait for Dark Souls III is going to be a longer one for players in Europe and the US than those in Japan. Bandai Namco has confirmed an April release date for the game in both Europe and America, as well as other PAL regions such as the Middle-East …

The largest American High Street games retailer will now only sell console bundles that include physical copies of games. It is common nowadays for hardware bundles to include download codes instead of physical games. However, Giant Bomb reports that the retailer in a recent conference call outlined its new physical …