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

Three indie games have signed digital publishing deals with Namco Bandai Europe. The first is team-based space combat simulator GoD Factory: Wingmen from Nine Dots Studio, which will be released on PC, Mac and Linux. Then there’s Magiko Soft’s retro outing Platformines. That will be released for PC on Steam …

Rocket Rainbow’s puzzle game Hay Ewe is the first third-party mobile title to be published

Activision is taking the unprecedented step of allowing free multiplayer Call of Duty access to those who don’t own the game. Starting this Friday (March 7th) and running until Monday (March 10th) a free demo of Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer will be available on Xbox Live to all Xbox …

The games console hardware market enjoyed a sharp year-on-year increase in Japan thanks to the launch of PS4, Famitsu has revealed. Data supplied to MCV shows that for February hardware sales were up 179.1 per cent year-on-year at 189.5m (1.11m). The software market climbed 113.8 per cent to 192.5m (1.12m). …

Intel Developer Blog: Softtalkblog discuss a new space to showcase developers' creations for Android

Senior programmer Matthew Griffin explains why, despite stories of crunch, he’s glad to be back in games development

South Park: The Stick of Truth will miss its March 7th release date in Germany and Austria. Videogamer reports that numerous users on Steam and NeoGaf have received messages from Ubisoft apologising for the delay. "The German and Austrian version of South Park: The Stick of Truth contains an unconstitutional …

Platform holder also plans to relax certification process to attract more game developers

A new major update has been released for the Xbox One to address a variety of the console’s issues. Many of these changes improve the console’s multiplayer with changes to tweaks made to matchmaking, party chat and friend features. The update also addresses the fame rate issues faced by European …

Eidos Montreal has let go of a significant number of development staff just one week after shipping its stealth action reboot Thief. Thief was met with mixed reviews when it arrived last week. The studio’s parent company Square Enix today confirmed toKotakuthat more than 20 staff have been made redundant. …