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

Australian studio Half Brick has licensed several companies to begin producing consumer products for its bestselling casual franchise Fruit Ninja. With over 300 million downloads on iPhone, iPad, and Android, Fruit Ninja is one of the best selling games in mobile history, and has been released for a variety of …

Electronic Arts says it will be out ‘in force’ at Gamescom this August. Less than 24 hours after Microsoft confirmed it wouldn’t be attending the German trade show or the Tokyo Game Show, EA has issued a confident statement underlining the importance of Gamescom. And it has confirmed it will …

Those who violate the new law could face up to five years imprisonment and a fine of £28k

Nintendo may not be prepared to talk about the Wii U price yet, but when it arrives later this year it will have a stronger day one offer than the 3DS launch, Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton told MCV. One of the problems with 3DS was content. When we launched …

Microsoft’s comfortable lead over the competition means it’s not ready to cut Xbox prices yet. The firm went all out on current-gen demos at E3 last week – so no next-gen talk, and no price drop for 360. The success we enjoy year-on-year encourages us to think we’re competitively priced …

The tough times continue for UK games retail, with the latest Chart-Track data showing the market fell 38 per cent last month. 1.8m games were sold in May, generating 45.5m. Both of those figures are almost 40 per cent down compared with the same period in 2011. For the third …

The current downturn in the sales of boxed games has been caused by boring content and no innovation. That’s according to Ubisoft’s Alain Corre, who says the market is desperate for new ideas – and if it doesn’t get it, spending on video games will continue to fall. Currently, the …

Anyone who still believes the games market is too generic should head to the High Street today. Warner Bros has published Lollipop Chainsaw, the latest title from inventive and often outspoken developer Suda51. Sure, zombie-slayers are nothing new but how many star barely-clothed cheerleaders with their boyfriend’s head dangling from …

Computing giant to make 'major announcement' on Monday

Blizzard’s Diablo III was the best selling game in the US in May, according to NPD’s latest numbers. The achievement doesn’t even take digital sales into account, which in Diablo III’s case would have been sizable. There were four other new entries in the US Top Ten – Rockstar’s Max …