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

Sales in Sony’s games division fell 15.1 per cent in the quarter ending December 31st, although overall Sony has enjoyed somewhat of a reversal of fortune. Games sales hit 268.5bn, hit by decreased sales of PS3 and PSP. Operating revenue fell by 29.2bn year-on-year to 4.6bn. Combined PS3 and PS2 …

HMV will close 66 stores over the next six weeks as part of its administration. MCV understands an announcement will be made later today on which stores will be closed, and that staff had been informed this morning. It was widely expected that administrators Deloitte would cut HMV’s store base …

Borderlands 2 is on track to become the highest-selling title in 2K’s history – as it nears 6m copies sold. Speaking in yesterday’s financials call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed Gearbox’s FPS sequel was the company’s biggest earner in terms of digital sales across the past fiscal year. "Building on …

Half-Life and Portal movies on the table as filmmaker considers dive into game development

Former vice president Joachim Kempin has revealed that Microsoft got into the console business primarily to take on and defeat Sony – after Sony denied Microsoft’s interest in partnership. According to Kempin, Microsoft set about creating the Xbox hardware so that Sony didn’t achieve the kind of dominance on televisions …

Valve boss says user should be shop curator, not corporations

With The Witcher 3 reveal behind it, CD Projekt has announced lifetime sales numbers for the franchise. Between The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, the series has surpassed 5m copies sold – with 2012’s Xbox 360 release of the sequel contributing significantly to the figure. The Witcher …

Believe the doom mongers and you’ll believe that games retail won’t exist in ten years time. We think it will, just in a radically different form. Traditional video games retail is dying. If you want the proof then simply look at the nightmare that has engulfed HMV and Blockbuster over …

Crowd-funded Android game console Ouya is set to hit US retail in June, carrying a price tag of $99.99. CEO Julie Uhrman has said that the console will first be made available to Kickstarter backers in March, followed by preorder customers, who will receive the console in April. The $99.99 …

The Wii U’s slow start on the market can be attributed to the difficulty of conveying its features to the public. That’s the opinion of Xavier Poix, the MD of Ubisoft’s Annecy, Montpellier, and Paris studios who also admitted that Ubisoft made mistakes with Wii U launch title ZombiU. "The …