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

Marketers said game was without a 'clear and easy' marketing message

Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II has debuted in second place in the weekly Japanese software chart. Combined sales across PS3 and Xbox 360 reached 220k units, with the PS3 SKU claiming No.2 with sales of 197,350. The Xbox 360 release charted at No.6 with 22,177 unit sales. Ubisoft’s …

It’s the season of giving and December is probably the best month for PlayaStation Plus subscribers since Sony introduced the Instant Game Collection. Getting added to the bouquet of games available for free download via PSN in December are Batman: Arkham City, Vanquish and Limbo. All three games will go …

Successfully Kickstarted VR headset Oculus Rift will miss its proposed pre-Christmas launch. It is now expected that development kits will begin shipping in March 2013, with all orders complete by mid-April. Designing, sourcing, and manufacturing thousands of developer kits is no small feat,” an update on the device’s Kickstarter page …

Online payment company PayPal has begun cutting off accounts connected to Usenet services. Usenet is an older form of the file-sharing sites that are now common on the internet. They are generally restricted to members and can be accessed in a number of ways aside from standard web browsers. They …

VR gaming system delays shipping to games makers, as new prototype headset and console are revealed

A lion tattoo on the ribcage of UFC fighter Carlos Condit has landed THQ in some unwelcome legal hot water. Condit has featured as a fighter in THQ’s UFC series and his digital likeness includes an exact replica of a lion tattoo on his midriff. And now the tattoo artist …

We R Interactive’s social browser game I Am Playr has struck a deal with shaving giant Gillette. The game will now be available on Gillette’s Football Club website, which offers goals and highlights from a number of European leagues. In addition, Gillette products will soon appear in the game through …

With the launch of Nintendo's new games console, Develop looks at what Unity's Wii U deal mean to developers of every size

The numbers don’t lie, but sometimes they do need to be considered in a wider context. Nintendo on Monday announced that the Wii U sold 400,000 units in its first week on sale in the US. Then Microsoft last night announced that in the same period it sold 750,000 Xbox …