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

Paid-for Xbox Live games and content are enjoying good growth” in the UK year-on-year, says Microsoft. In an interview with MCV, Xbox Live’s UK product manager Pav Bhardwaj said this includes Arcade releases, Games on Demand titles and extra add-on content. We don’t have any particular numbers as such, but …

Tech giants to meet in magistrates in attempt to resolve patent dispute

Insolvency firm FA Simms & Partners is to hold a meeting with Total Console Repair next week with a view to the company entering administration. Business customers of TCR have today received letters from FA Simms asking for details about debts owed by the troubled company. Its website is also …

Microsoft’s Xbox Live UK product manager talks Minecraft, Arcade Next and the future of the Xbox 360 online platform. Tell us about the Arcade Next promotion – why group a bunch of new games under that tagline? How effective have past promotions been? Yeah I think we’ve been quite fortunate. …

With the doom-mongers continuing the circle, THQ has announced that it expects Q4 sales to exceed expectations. The publisher had previously forecast net sales of between $130-$150m. However, it now expects non-GAAP net sales to hit between $160-170m. It credited the boost to strong sales of Saints Row: The Third, …

Unique user log-ins increase by 150%, whilst concurrent usage also rose by 40% since last month

So how long did CCP’s PLEX for graphics cards deal last? Less than two minutes. The EVE Online developer teamed up with nVidia to offer players the chance to buy GeForce GTX 560 graphics cards with PLEX, the game’s in-game currency. The 100 cards made available were completely sold out …

The senior vice president of EA’s digital division has claimed that the importance of the relationship between publishers and retail is eroding. Specifically, he believes that the rise of digital has allowed publishers to form a closer, more direct relationship with consumers that is far more important”. We’re clearly going …

Value falls 28 per cent since same time last month

The jury in the trial of Norwegian gunman Anders Breivik were yesterday shown images of the accused’s World of Warcraft character. Having been told that Breivik spent the best part of a year playing Blizzard’s MMO full time”, they were shown his character – Justicar Andersnordic. He smiled when it …