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

This year will be a major year for the independent retail scene, say store owners. Indie retailers hope the mass closure of HMV and Blockbuster stores have provided them with opportunities to expand both their in-store offerings and the number of shops. Last week, major retailers pledged to fill the …

The popularity of emerging business models and free-to-play has significantly reduced the scope for full-price triple-A success in the modern games market. That’s the opinion of Ubisoft’s Toronto Studio boss Jade Raymond, who believes that while the sector has reduced in size there is still scope for success in more …

The organisers of Gamescom have confirmed the return of the Gamescom 2013 Roadshow presentation in London. The meeting offers a chance for attendees to get up to speed with everything Gamescom ahead of the annual European expo in August. It takes place on April 18th at 2:30pm in UKIE’s Wadour …

New users can log in to Zynga.com and play games without a Facebook account

Lord of the Rings Online studio Turbine is developing a free-to-play arena battler based on the DC Comics licence. It’s called Infinite Crisis and it will be published by Warner Bros. It’s due out at some time in 2013 on PC. It’ll feature lots of recognisable DC faces and will …

2K Games’ BioShock Infinite, which goes sale worldwide tonight, is receiving a blistering reception from critics. The review embargo lifted just one hour ago at the time of writing, and already the game has an almighty 96 per cent rating on Metacritic. Only 13 other games have ever scored so …

Artificial intelligence tool aims to 'simplify behaviour authoring'

EA’s upcoming co-op shooter FUSE has been given official European and North American release dates. The game, which is developed by Ratchet & Clank and Resistance creators Insomniac, will arrive at European retail on May 31st, just a few days after the North American release on May 28th. Three separate …

Emulation community likely to bring Nintendo games to Android-powered console

Sony has revealed that around a third of the games it sells on Vita are digital. Is that impressive? That’s a matter of opinion. Certainly it doesn’t sound anything special when the thousands of games that are downloaded everyday on iOS and Android are considered. But from a company transitioning …