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

Skylanders has been such a huge success it has made Activision the biggest seller of RFID tech in the world – but Nintendo refused a proposed partnership with the brand. In an in-depth look at the franchise’s history on Polygon, developer Toys for Bob revealed that the game was pitched …

GungHo Entertainment has four games each generating around $1m per month in revenue. CEO Kazuki Morishita said, in an interview withBloomberg, that the Japanese publisher has six profitable title overall, with four of those breaking 100 million (583,576) every month. That isn’t good enough for the Morishita, however, who said …

Chinese version of match-three game coming to two telecoms services

David Braben is to sell up to 1.6m shares in Frontier Developments following the buyout of an IT firm which holds the rights to the Elite franchise he co-created. Frontier purchased software and IT consultancy Professional Practice Automation in a 5.09m deal on Tuesday, April 15th. Braben, CEO of Frontier, …

Reclaims rights to Elite in £5m buyout of Cambridge IT consultancy

Thanks to the generosity of the UK games industry, last week’s GamesAid Tenner at the MCV Awards raised an incredible 6,371. Big thanks must go to Sony PlayStation, too, which matched every single 10 donated with a tenner of its own. Gamesaid Tenner fund-raising during the MCV Awards has always …

Sony has revealed more details of its next firmware update for PS4. The 1.70 update will introduce something called SHAREfactory, a video editor app that allows for the combining of clips and the addition of effects, text, stickers, custom music and audio, as well as video commentary. Gameplay increments will …

A version of EA shooter Titanfall was at one stage proposed for PlayStation Vita. That’s one of many revelations in Geoff Keighley’s recently released documentary The Final Hours of Titanfall, as reported by GameSpot. Apparently after hearing of the specs for Xbox One Respawn got in touch with Sony to …

New title from the makers of Hector: Badge of Carnage is third title in line to be published on Steam via Team17

Documents unearthed as part of a US legal battle between Apple and Samsung have revealed the distasteful truth underpinning some corporate strategy. Cnet reports that Samsung America’s former head of national sales Michael Pennington saw the death of Apple boss Steve Jobs in 2011 as an opportunity for the company …