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

Onus to be placed on programmers, who will need to widen their skills, survey claims

Electronic Arts is now within touching distance of becoming the first games company to topple Cityville, the Zynga sensation that holds the record as the most popular Facebook game of all time. According to Appdata, The Sims Social now drawn in 65 million monthly active users (MAUs) – the closest …

Its spiritual predecessor, Demon’s Souls, was renowned for being tough. And that Dark Souls is harder still has seemingly enchanted critics even more. The review embargo for Namco Bandai’s latest lifted last night to reveal near universal praise for the RPG from game critics. Dark Souls requires intense focus. This …

It’s been four years in development and finally this Friday (October 7th) id Software’s free-roaming post-apocalyptic shooter Rage will be in the hands of UK gamers. The first reviews for the game were published overnight and paint a reasonably solid picture of the violent adventure. While story and structure may …

Industry unsure on health of living-room devices; mobile and social expected to soar

Having missed its previously expected summer announcement, tonight’s the night when Apple will unveil the latest iteration of its world-conquering iPhone device. Quite what the new handset will be of course remains a matter of speculation. The biggest question is whether it will actually be the iPhone 4S – an …

British studios upbeat about future business

Estimates from a number of online sources claim that playing games via new streaming service OnLive consumes between 2GB and 3GB every hour. Tech blogs Techbeast.net and The Perils of Parallel estimate hourly usage at 2.9GB and 3GB respectively, while UK’s biggest ISP BT has a slightly lower estimate of …

MCV sits down with U-Trax president Richard van der Giessen about the state of the localisation and quality assurance sector. How have publisher attitudes towards the sector changed in the past year? There’s no way to make a general statement about this for all publishers. Some of them really get …

The trilogy may have concluded, but Gears of War is far from finished according to new comments from Epic’s design guru Cliff Bleszinski. I feel like we’ve wrapped it up and put a bow on it. It is what it is and we’ve put it under the tree for the …