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

Global games retail giant GameStop is predicting big things for the next Call of Duty. The firm says that Black Ops II is the most pre-ordered in its history – and that this means the franchise could once again break records at release in November. CoD: Black Ops II is …

Call of Duty Elite membership will come free with Black Ops II. The bespoke social network was once seen as Activision’s early attempt to manoeuvre the Call of Duty IP into the subscription-based market, but those plans have seemingly been abandoned. Instead, Activision will try to generate post-sale revenue for …

Zotac launched its line-up of budget graphics cards based on Nvidia’s GTX 650 Ti graphics processor in Mumbai last week. Alongside the launch of the company’s new line of Zbox mini-PCs, Zotac unveiled three cards based on the latest 650 Ti chipset, effectively completing Nvidia’s gamut of Kepler-based600 seriesofferings. Aside …

Permanent Xbox Live bans are being handed out to Xbox 360 owners who have illegally pirated Halo 4. The game became available online over the weekend, but can only be played by users who have modded their Xbox 360 console to run pirated code. And have then been daft enough …

Message pop-up in Viewer app suggests switch to new business model

Mobile outfit to provide workspace and assistance with Native and HTML5 development for Blackberry 10

A Channel 4 game based on the upcoming sequel to the Christmas classic The Snowman is coming to iPhone, iPad and Android devices this December. Developed by former Rare and Free Radical developers at the recently founded studio Crash Lab, The Snowman and the Snow Dog is a 3D game …

Just three sleeps to go until the Games Media Awards. And if you’re lucky enough to be going you’ll be enjoying your first drink courtesy of Defiance. Trion’s MMO is the pre-event drinks sponsor at Thursday night’s hotly contested award show for the UK’s best games writing talent. The online …

Enough stock to last until January 2013, says manufacturer

The Xbox 360 will not be receiving a price cut in the UK this Christmas, Microsoft has told MCV. It emerged this morning that $50 has been slashed off the price of both the 4GB and 250GB versions of the console in North America. And shortly after that we learnt …