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

PC gaming will grow to $24 billion by 2017, spurred on by rising living standards in BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, and China, analysis firm IDC has predicted. The IDC expects digital PC gaming to grow at a rate of 5% per year outside America, thanks to an increase …

Ubisoft’s Far Cry Classic is available now on Xbox Live for Xbox 360. The game is an HD re-working of the cult PC shooter. It’s priced at 7.99 on Xbox Live, and will cost the same when it hits PSN for PS3 tomorrow. Ubisoft has also nailed down a February …

Dong Nguyen has spoken publicly for the first time since the high profile removal of his hit title Flappy Bird from the world’s app stores. And it transpires that the decision was caused simply by the Vietnamese developer’s concerns about the amount of time people were spending playing the simplistic …

Indie start-up Mech Mocha has been selected for the Chartboost University, a US-based education program for budding game developers. The all-expenses-paid scholarship will give Mech Mocha the opportunity to learn from top mobile game developers through one-on-one mentoring sessions and lectures. Mech Mocha is the brainchild of IIITM Gwalior alumni …

Borderlands 2 is heading to PS Vita – alongside a hardware bundle packaging the game with the new, slimmer Vita. Sony’s John Koller announced the news at California PlayStation event this week, adding that a Vita Borderlands 2 hardware bundle will launch alongside the game this spring. The package includes …

Few people possess the sort of insight into indie game development that industry veteran Jason Della Rocca does. Having headed the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) for nine years, he’s been involved with independent game development long before it went indie”. Della Rocca’s Execution Labs now funds and mentors indie …

Ubisoft reported earnings for the quarter ending December 31st, 2013 – revealing a significant year-over-year decline. The firm brought in €520m in sales during its Q3 period, a 35.2 per cent drop from the same quarter in 2012. Overall sales for the first three quarters of the company’s current fiscal …

The Wii U version of Watch Dogs is still in development, but won’t launch alongside the rest of the game’s platforms this spring. The delay was confirmed during Ubisoft’s call to investors this week, where the publisher again committed to a spring release target for the title on PC, PS3, …

The Rabbids are making their way to the big screen. Ubisoft, Sony and Columbia Pictures have announced a partnership to produce a full-length feature film starring the Rabbids. Shot to fame by the Rayman franchise, the creatures have proven popular with younger viewers and have since branched into their own …

Much of the criticism aimed at now-defunct smartphone title Flappy Bird concerned allegations of IP infringement. Some quarters of the press and development community criticised the game’s creator Dong Nguyen for his use of a green pipe design that quite clearly references Nintendo’s Mario platform series. However, Nintendo spokesperson Yasuhiro …