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

NPD’s March 2015 report shows PlayStation 4 on top in a down period for hardware at US retail, while Battlefield: Hardline and Bloodborne duked it out for the top spot in a flourishing software category. While Sony declared victory over Microsoft and Nintendo in hardware, the category was down 21 …

343 Industries and Vanguard Games’ twin-stick shooter Halo: Spartan Strike has launched on Windows PC, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone and – somewhat unexpectedly – iOS. The PC version is available now via Steam, while the Windows 8.1 release can be had on the Windows Store. Meanwhile, mobile editions can be …

Star Wars Battlefront will launch this November, if what fans have unearthed from the source code for the game’s website is anything to go by. Polygon reports on the discovery of the following bit of info hidden in the source code for the news page of the game’s official site: …

Warner Bros walked away the biggest winner from this year’s MCV Awards, claiming three of the night’s most prestigious prizes. WB Games UK was crowned as the top Games Publisher and PR Team, with the firm’s hit title Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor taking the Sales Triumph trophy. Bungie and Activision’s …

PS4 exclusive Bloodborne is on track to become the most successful game in the Souls series to date, with digital sales accounting for over a tenth of its total. While it’s not a Souls game by name, of course, it’s commonly accepted that Bloodborne sits resolutely within the Souls games …

The creative director of Mortal Kombat has said that Mortal Kombat X has sold faster than any previous entry in the series’ 13-year history. Thank you everyone for making Mortal Kombat X the biggest launch in MK history,” Ed Boon said. You made the game FAR exceed our wildest expectations.” …

Feminist Frequency creator and equality advocate Anita Sarkeesian has made it into this year’s Time 100 list. [Sarkessian] became the target of vicious, misogynist harassment that included death and rape threats, pornographic vandalism of her Wikipedia page and a coordinated effort to have her Kickstarter flagged as terrorism. All of …

The cinematic director at developer NetherRealm has (somewhat ambiguously) appeared to confirm rumours that Mortal Kombat X has introduced the first ever gay character to the series. The character in question is new fighter Kung Jin, a Shaolin Monk, the origins of which are explored in one of the game’s …

Viagame’s second ever Hearthstone House Cup last month saw viewer numbers jump 400 per cent compared to its first event. MTG’s gathering took place last month between March 27th and 29th. Over 3.9m live streams were started in this time from almost 2m unique viewers. At its peak it had …

We profile a series of development tools you may not have used before