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

One of the Xbox 360’s last big retail releases will miss its 2013 release date. Developer Lionhead has confirmed that the game will now arrive in February 2014. We’ve been working hard for the past year to bring you the very best Fable Anniversary experience on Xbox 360,” it wrote. …

Rick Gibson assesses the uncomfortable relationship between user-made game videos and copyright

Ubisoft has detailed the many visual additions that will feature in the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Points of interest include the rain effects, which see lighting applied to each individual raindrop, and the work that has gone into animating the oceans. Also highlighted …

Develop looks at a new spatial audio offering from German outfit Iosono

Futuresource Consulting has predicted that PS4 will enjoy a decent sales advantage over Xbox One over the next five years. It reckons that PS4 will have sold 36m units by 2018 with Xbox One having shifted just 30m units – although it expects both machines to fall short of their …

Al character Cortana from the Halo series is to lend itself to a new Siri-rivalling tech from Microsoft. That’s according to ZDnet, which has collated a number of hints and leaks from across the internet to arrive at the claim. The tech can apparently learn and adapt, relying on machine-learning …

The increasing importance of tracking digital sales has been highlighted once again by multiplayer heist shooter Payday 2. Its developer Starbreeze told investors last night, via a note translated by Eurogamer, that its game has to date sold a total of 1.58m copies. Perhaps more interestingly, however, it added that …

Former GM Alan Patmore admits to stealing trade secrets from social game maker

Thousands of titles vanish from Microsoft's storefront

$8 billion stock sale cut ties with Vivendi, but another shareholder claims unjust enrichment