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

Tenth annual conference in Austin October 9-11

Kinect Star Wars finally arrived on shelves earlier this week, standing as a flagship for the new generation of Xbox 360’s motion controlled titles. MCV speaks to Microsoft’s Master Yoda of Kinect, Kudo Tsunoda, about why the game is a major boon for the device and how far the technology …

Earlier this week, we revealed the Top Five biggest games brands of all time using Chart-Track’s CUBE?data warehouse solution. This week we reveal the full Top Ten, taking into account all games sold from 1996 to the present day. Only three brands within the all-time Top Ten are from outside …

Rising Star Games is putting its weight behind three flagship titlesthis summer. Akai Katana?will be Rising Star’s first pan-Atlantic release following the opening of its US arm earlier this year. It will arrive in May, alongside Rune Factory Oceans on PS3. Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns, the franchise’s …

The boxed games retail market may be down year-on-year but SteelBook SKUs are booming. The game packaging is increasingly used for special editions, and manufacturer Scanavo says it has seen sales increase 500 per cent in the past year. It claims more and more triple-A titles use SteelBook today than …

Xbox hopes Kinect Star Wars will become a Wii-style evergreen seller. Creative director for Kinect Kudo Tsunoda said the power of the Star Wars brand means that, unlike most releases, the game’s sales will not deteriorate rapidly after launch. Star Wars really is one of those evergreen brands,” Tsunoda told …

Fans will not be disappointed by the new Amazing Spider-Man game, Activision says. The firm admits Spidey titles have had a chequered history, so has made sure this year’s movie tie-in got a full two-year development cycle. Traditionally, Spider-Man games based on films have been the more successful titles. And …

It costs less to buy games from Tesco than it does via Steam. Retail price wars and general cost depreciation means that, on average, games lose 25 per cent of their value in just one month on the UK High Street. And that just doesn’t happen in the same way …

Namco Bandai has announced that upcoming RPG The Witcher 2 will be available at GAME and Gamestation. Add this to confirmation that all Reward, Elite and Gift cards are now fully active and restored and it’s yet another step toward both retailers returning to full strength. GAME, Gamestation and Namco …

In MCV’s weekly rundown of the hottest vacancies and latest personnel news, popular marketing exec Rob Lowe prepares to leave Nintendo and we look at the best job vacancies. Rob Lowe leaving Nintendo for BBC Rob Lowe will leave Nintendo UK on June 1st. He is moving to BBC Worldwide, …