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

This year the Develop in Brighton Conference's indie element is bigger than ever. The organiser tells us more.

A Union Jack style Xbox 360 S Kinect bundle with two games has appeared on Amazon.co.uk. UPDATE: The listing has now been removed. The Amazon product page described the bundle as the Xbox 360 S 4GB Celebration Pack, which is priced at 249.99 and includes the Kinect motion accessory. The …

Budget software company Cosmi has acquired THQ’s value-centric publishing and distribution division ValuSoft. The move ties in with THQ’s widely-publicised new strategy of dropping all but its strongest and most important IP and operations, though the sale of assets is unlikely to quieten observers keen to predict the demise of …

Blizzard has confirmed that HMV’s London Oxford Street store will host the official UK launch event for upcoming PC title Diablo III. The fun will kick off at 10:00pm on May 14th with the game going on sale at 11:00pm. There will be a number of giveaways and competitions and …

Gree and Dena to spearhead new self-regulation policy

The controversial and now long-delayed Digital Economy Act will not come into effect until 2014, the Department for Culture, media and Sport has announced. It is not yet known whether or not the delay will have any implication for the introduction of new PEGI age ratings, which MCV this morning …

Long-delayed certification measures set to launch in July, UKIE claims

Ubisoft is to release a new free-to-play online instalment in its Silent Hunter series. Called Silent Hunter Online, the game can be played in a browser. It is being developed by Settlers and Anno developer Blue Byte. It will run using Adobe Flash player 11 and will be fully 3D. …

Having announced plans to resurrect the Leisure Suit Larry IP in late 2011, developer Replay Games has turned to crowd-funding site Kickstarter to bring life to the project. And clearly the plea has been well received – at the time of writing the project has raised $517,842 from 11,587 backers. …

Konami has released a live-action teaser video for Metal Gear Rising. Series’ favourites such as Solid Snake or Raiden are now-where to be seen. Instead, we see a soldier being tortured in some kind of military lab. The video closes by promising more details on April 30th. Here’s the video: