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

Microsoft has announced a range of midnight and breakfast launches for Gears of War 3, with the primary event being held at EB Games MacArthur Square. The event will be for media and consumers alike, and will take place from 10pm on 19th September. There will be gift bags for …

Cranberry Production’s new PC game The Lost Chronicles of Zerzura to be distributed by Lace Mamba Global in ANZ, UK and more. The Lost Chronicles of Zerzura is a medieval point-and-click adventure game, set in 1514 against the backdrop of the Inquisition, and follows on from Cranberry Production’s Black Mirror …

Macquarie University’s Interactive Media Institute and Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre have announced details on GAME, its upcoming 3-day videogames event. The event will consist of a public debate about videogame politics and policy, an academic conference and a games festival, and promises an ‘exploration and celebration of this exciting new …

Gameplanet is reporting that Outsmart, developer of browser-based Small Worlds, has received NZD$1.8 million in government funding. Small Worlds, originally launched in 2008, is a 3D environment played inside your browser which presents content from web and media sources, online games and more. Outsmart is promising that the funding will …

The weekly games software market value hit 17.6m this week – up 28 per cent over the 13.7m generated last week. Game unit sales leapt 11 per cent to 687,610. It’s the best performance for the boxed games industry in the past month, with Dead Island and Warhammer 40,000: Space …

With the Move patch for LittleBigPlanet going live recently, GameVision looks at the ongoing success of this relatively recent IP. With our GameVision survey we asked 6,646 people about the game, of whom 657 had played it; we went on to ask 291 of these about their experience of playing …

PC game downloader Green Man Gaming has teamed up with GlobalCharge to offer its customers mobile payments. Customers can now update their store credit from their mobile bill or pay as you go credit. Many other distributors already offer mobile payments. The movie payment market is expected to be worth …

Studio shifts focus away from advertising support

Ignition title to also be released on Xperia Play

Subscriptions for MMOs have declined for the first time, according to new research. Despite the drop, microtransactions continue to grow strongly”, said Piers Harding-Rolls of analytics firm Screen Digest, which carried out the study. He added I don’t believe we’ll see subscriptions grow again in this sector as microtransactions take …