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

Sony VP Kazuo Hirai has announced that PlayStation Vita won’t reach European and US shelves this year. It had been rumoured for some time that the device would miss its Q4 target, and now that has been confirmed. Retailers had previously told MCV they were hopeful the handheld would arrive …

The biggest digital distributor in games will address the trade at the London Games Conference. Jason Holtman, director of business development for Steam at US super-developer Valve, will present a keynote at the November event about the digital market. He will be joined by Sega’s John Clark, head of digital …

Activision Blizzard has posted better-than-expected revenues for Q2 2011, thanks largely to strong growth from its digital business. The publisher reported record net revenues of $1.1bn for the three months ended June 30th, up from $967m in the same period last year. This is ahead of the $985m previously expected. …

No man, no law and no war can stop this game from hitting store shelves. MCV can reveal a Rambo video game will arrive at retail next year, courtesy of UK-based publisher Reef Entertainment and supplier Creative Distribution. Reef fended off competition from other publishers to secure the game rights …

MCV talks to the previous winners of a Games Media Award. This week, it’s Alec Meer from Games Blog winner Rock, Paper, Shotgun. How did it feel to win a Games Media Award last year? Pretty good! It is the largest single lump of plastic I’ve ever had in my …

Xbox firm to publish raft of indie motion-controlled games as Christmas approaches

World-leading MMO faces new challenges as customers chew through content

Brisbane-based company Euclideon has demonstrated its new voxel engine allegedly capable of 100’000 times better graphics than exist today. The engine maps the objects in a game world as a series of individual points rather than a series of polygons, and claims to be able to do away with the …

Disney’s big Q4 release of the year Disney Universe will hit UK shelves on October 28th, MCV can reveal. The title is scheduled to arrive on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PC. It lets players wear over 40 in-game suits based on popular Disney and Pixar characters such as Nemo …

How’s this for a success story? GameStop has gracefully and legitimately worked itself into the UK games trade. And that’s by closing physical stores – not opening GAME rivals or buying up Grainger as the nose-tappers would have you believe – and establishing a compelling and credible .co.uk. Publishers, distributors …