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

Zynga has made another acquisition of a mobile social games developer: New York firm Astro Ape. The deal has not been officially announced, but US site Business Insider hasspottedthat Astro Ape’s executive team have changed their LinkedIn profiles to reflect new employment at ‘Zynga NY’. Astro Ape CEO Chieh Huang …

GAMESCOM: Assassin’s Creed, Rayman Origins and Michael Jackson: The Experience are just some of the big games Ubisoft has planned for PS Vita. The publisher will also release Lumines, Asphalt and Dungeon Hunter Alliance for the device, as well as a number of new IP not yet revealed. PlayStation Vita …

Ubisoft’s The Smurfs & Co has become the fastest-growing Facebook game in the past two weeks, picking up 4.1m monthly active users. The town-building adventure game went live on July 29th and is currently the No.1 licence-based social game in the world, according to AppData. The Smurfs & Co will …

iOS port marks first excursion of lucrative BBC IP to Google platform

GAMESCOM: Nintendo has dated a number of potentially blockbuster games as part of its Gamescom press avalanche. Chief amongst them is Wii title The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which will be released in Europe on November 18th. The company has also confirmed that Super Mario 3D Land will hit …

LinkedIn profiles reveal purchase, company name change to Zynga NY

Japanese puzzle game Catherine has already been released in North America and Japan, but now looks like it’s heading down under as well. GAME and EB Games have both listed Catherine on their web sites, carrying a release date of some time in October, and distributor QV Software has the …

UK trade body sides with European Games Developer Federation on funding initiative

GAMESCOM: Nintendo has announced, via a tiny snippet at the end of its Gamescom press release, that it is to launch a new version of the Wii console this Christmas. Simply referred to as the Wii Bundle”, the new hardware introduces a streamlined Wii console with a slightly altered configuration**, …

A whopping €3m (2.6m) in prizes can be won by Virgin Gaming members this year. It’s a huge increase over the tournament firm’s first year, where $1m (620,000) in prizes was on offer. The company says key to its ability to increase the prize fund is its new Series Tournaments. …