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

Casual games giant makes first move towards stock flotation

Staff claim publisher probably always planned to close studio since last year's layoffs

Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed may have proved that the annual release model can be a success outside of the sports genre, but analyst Michael Pachter has warned others about following the model. "We question the strategy of annual franchises for any game except sports simulations," he said in …

US analyst Michael Pachter believes that the PS Vita will achieve what the PSP did not and eat into Nintendo’s handheld market share. However, it’s not all good news – he also predicts that the overall portable games market will decline at the expense of smartphone gaming growth. "We continue …

2007 PC title Crysis could be due for a long-awaited console release on Xbox 360. That’s if the rumours coming from Korea, and published by Kotaku, are found to be correct. A new listing from the Korean ratings board lists Crytek’s game for the console and names the publisher as …

Valve engine and modding tools available free of charge following TF2 going F2P

UK studio Media Molecule has revealed that it’s work on Sony’s LittleBigPlanet franchise is over. For now at least. According to a Tweet from Edge, the studio’s Siobhan Reddy told at audience at Barcelona’s GameLab 2011 event that: We’re stepping away from Little Big Planet to focus on some new …

We profile Air Edel, High Score, Media Mill, Nimrod Productions, Richard Jacques Studio and Side UK

US firm cuts staff following project cancellation

The previously announced free-to-play update for Funcom MMO Age of Conan has gone live. Massively reports that the change arrives alongside a host of new content for the title, including two new dungeons as well as new solo and raid missions. Conan continues what has become a tidal wave of …