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

Xbox manufacturer signs multi-year deal with Facebook dev Arkadium

A Japanese magazine has reported that a slimmer version of the Nintendo 3DS could be on shelves by the end of the year. Speculation about a new version of the handheld formed part of Nikkei Trendy’s 2012 preview feature, listed under ‘spring’ according to Kotaku. "To increase the 3DS’ install …

The Japanese video games market suffered an overall decline of eight per cent year-on-year in 2011, according to the latest Famitsu data. In total the market was worth 454,380m. Andriasang reports that the software sector fell by 14 per cent to 274,640m throughout the period, though the launch of platforms …

Price policy and publishing restrictions also revised

Microsoft and accessory manufacturer Datel have settled their Xbox 360 patent infringement and antitrust cases against each other. Staffordshire-based Datel originally took Microsoft to court in November 2009 after claiming a 360 dashboard update was issued to block certain Datel accessories from working, reports Bloomberg. These included Datel’s Max Memory …

Nick Gibson looks at why Europe is struggling with industry investment

New York based casual and social games developer Arkadium has signed a strategic multi-year, multi-game partnership” with Xbox and Windows platform holder Microsoft. The studio’s titles reach an audience of over 10m users each month on Facebook and other social gaming sites. It claims to have the largest Flash games …

The Valve founder shares his wisdom as part of Develop's new series of job-hunting tips

Microsoft can seemingly do no right when it comes to indie developers on Xbox Live, but a new set of policy changes may go some way toward appeasing the indie dev community. Three major changes have now been made to the Indie Games developer T&C’s. First, games can now be …

Imported copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic are being sold via EB Games to customers who specifically pre-order the title. The hotly anticipated MMO left Australian / New Zealand gamers wanting last year when it was announced that the gamewouldn’t be releasinghere at the same time as the rest …