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

Call of Duty: Black Ops II’s official UK launch event will take place at HMV’s Oxford Street store next Monday (November 12th). A 1,000 strong audience is expected, all of whom will receive goody bags. Treyarch developers will be on hand to sign copies of the game and a ‘Zombie …

The firm behind upcoming free game Hawken has scored an extra $18m in VC funding. And it says it can use the money to quickly build an audience of over 10m players. The PC?title from Meteor Entertainment is due for a global roll out on December 12th, and this week …

Publisher Square Enix has dismissed the notion that free-to-play is the only business model for mobile. The firm says it has had success with its premium-priced iOS titles, including episodic title Final Fantasy Dimensions, which costs in total 19.99. It’s actually done a lot more revenue than a lot of …

Major developers believe Sony can be the No.1 platform holder once again, thanks to its ambitious move into the free-to-play market. The firm has just released a free version of SingStar, with customers having to pay for the music. Meanwhile, developer CCP is creating a free PS3 FPS called Dust …

It will impossible to escape the launch of Halo 4 this week as the Xbox team prepares its most ambitious campaign to date. Master Chief’s latest adventure – released tomorrow (November 6th) – will be supported by the biggest out of house budget Xbox UK has ever spent on a …

Free-to-play studio behind Settlers is looking for senior and entry-level applicants

The first UK High Street prices for Halo 4 have gone live in this morning’s national press. Retailer GAME will sell the game for 99p when customers trade-in any two games from its ongoing trade-in list. Supermarket Sainsbury’s, meanwhile is offering Halo 4 for just 32.99 when purchased with 2100 …

Ubisoft’s flagship franchise has broken its own records with the release of Assassin’s Creed III. The game debuted at No.1 in the UK All Formats Charts and is the publisher’s biggest launch to date. It almost doubled the week one sales of 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II, and surpassed Ubisoft’s previous …

Zynga has told players of FishVille and Treasure Isle that their games will be terminated on December 5th. The move comes after the publisher revealed last month that it plans to switch off 13 titles and close a number of studios as it wrestles to get to grips with its …

Former GameStop vice president of corporate communications Chris Olivera has pleaded guilty to fraud for the theft of nearly $2m from the Texas-based company. As part of his job as the public face of the games retailer, Olivera oversaw the handling of invoices from vendors. Court documentsprovided by Eric Nicholson …