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

Online entertainment retail giant Play.com has agreed to sell itself to Japanese company Rakuten. The agreed fee is 25m. Rakuten is the largest online retail operator in Japan. Play.com is its third European acquisition following moves for French site PriceMinister and German shopping portal Tradoria. In total the company operates …

Nearly three quarters of all App Store revenue comes from in-app item sales, new data suggests. A study published by smartphone analyst firm Distimo claims that the huge bulk of App Store cash comes from a relatively small crop of apps. Only four per cent of iOS applications utilise in-app …

Konami has announced it is working on Boom Boom Dance, a music game for Xbox Live Arcade. The title will use Kinect to track players’ movements as they reach to hit a number of onscreen symbols with their arms and legs in time with the music. The debut trailer can …

Viacom is taking ex-shareholders of Rock Band developer Harmonix to court, following a lawsuit filed against the firm itself last year. The former parent company of Harmonix and owner of MTV claims that previous Harmonix shareholders owe it over $131m, reports Gamasutra. Viacom claims this is a refund” of the …

Access – a new on-console PS3 show from Future Publishing – goes live this afternoon. Free to all UK PSN account holders, Access will be available every Wednesday and is hosted by comedian Lucy Porter. The show lets consumers check out the latest titles, industry events and SCE UK’s growing …

Google has opened up the internet giant’s social platform Google+ to the open public after three months of ‘field trial’ testing. "Google+ is still in its infancy, of course, but we’re more excited than ever to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software," wrote Google engineering chief …

The godfather of social games to return soon as company IPO hangs

EA CFO Eric Brown has told investors that the company is unlikely to announce a release date for BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic until the end of October. And while the company is still aiming for ‘holiday 2011′, it admits that a slip to 2012 is not completely …

Fans of Angry Birds can now embarrass themselves with a new range of themed Halloween outfits and headpieces. Costume Discounters is stocking 14 different bird and pig costumes from Rovio’s 350m-selling mobile game franchise, as reported by MacTrast. The costumes are available in both adult and child sizes, with RRPs …

Nintendo will release a 3DS version of Tetris on October 21st, continuing the long-running block-stacking puzzle series. Released as Tetris Axis in the US, the game will simply be known as Tetris in the UK and Europe, and will feature more than 20 variations on the classic handheld game. Naturally, …