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

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 …

Microsoft is letting Xbox 360 owners access entertainment apps such as Netflix for free from April 20th until April 23rd. No Xbox Live Gold membership will be required during this time either – anyone with a 360 will be able to access all of the online service’s features. As part …

We ask the engine outfit's managing director David Coghlan what its latest ventures mean for the future

It may be the biggest and most important retailer in the UK, but supermarket giant Tesco has posted its first fall in UK profits for 20 years. Profits at its UK arm fell one per cent to 2.5bn for the year ending February 25th. UK sales fell 1.2 per cent …

Ahead of its release next week, analyst firm Cowen and Company has predicted that Activision’s Prototype 2 will struggle at retail. Gamasutra reports that that game is likely to see a soft performance" upon release, citing that fact that it has failed to break into Amazon’s Top 100 on either …

Spectacular. Truly spectacular. And the picture of the first-gen Xbox Metro has used really rounds it off. Today’s copy of freesheet newspaper Metro takes alarmist mainstream video gaming reporting to a WHOLE new level. Check this headline: Xbox paedophile predators ‘move in on prey within two minutes of contact”. We …

Dead Space 3 pre-orders are now being accepted through at least one retailer; in spite of the fact that EA has never actually had the chance to announce the title in any official sense. South African games website BT Games (via Shacknews) is currently taking pre-orders for the would be …

Sony has announced a trio of new, free applications for Vita owners to dive into. Following up the Welcome Park application, Paint Park turns Vita’s touchscreen into a sketch pad where users can make and share drawings with friends. Next in line is another in the park series, Treasure Park. …

SOE has passed along statistics to illustrate the impact of moving their popular and long-standing MMO EverQuest over to the free-to-play model. The developer/publisher shared (via Blue’s News) concurrent usage is up 40 per cent, with unique log-ins having increased by 150 percent since going F2P. Overall EverQuest registrations have …

EA expects their company to grow substantially in employee count by the end of the year, despite reports earlier this week that the publisher was set to let go as many as 1,000 workers. EA is growing and looking to hire hundreds of people for our digital, console, mobile and …