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

Ben Cousins, the former studio head at British outfit EA Easy, has joined mobile games group Ngmoco. Cousins, who left EA in March, is now tasked with running and raising Ngmoco’s new Stockholm-based studio. Much of the studio’s work will be focused on building content for the social gaming platform …

The popular Nintendo DS puzzle adventure series Professor Layton is making the leap to social game platforms. Developer Level-5 has struck a deal with Japanese casual gaming company DeNA to bring Professor Layton Royale to its Mobage mobile portal. The firms made the announcement during a joint press conference in …

A new television service for 3DS has gone live in Japan today. Nintendo has partnered with broadcasters Fuji Television and Nippon Television to create downloadable programs for the handheld under the new Itsu no Ma ni Terebi service. According to Andriasang, the TV service is delivered through the 3DS’ Spot …

Triple-A budgets for HD console games won't settle, Guillemot claims

A member of Namco Bandai’s European community team has admitted on Facebook that Microsoft paid for RPG title Tales of Vesperia to be an Xbox 360 exclusive outside of Japan. "Microsoft paid for the exclusivity the same way Sony paid for having Heavy Rain only on PS3," Charlotte Toci stated, …

Forget everything that has gone before. If rumours of LulzSec’s latest hack are proven to be true, the group may just have made a politically significant assault. A document available online suggests that LulzSec has acquired all the highly secretive data submitted in the 2011 UK Census earlier this year. …

Former Easy Studio boss to build content for Dena's Mobage platform

Retailer ShopTo has become the first outlet to offer an RRP for PlayStation Vita software, pegging the price at 39.99. In total the site names 20 games for launch – which, incidentally, it dates as November 4th. Games listed include WipEout 2048, Super Stardust Delta, Resistance, Monster Hunter Portable, Killzone, …

The man behind last week’s controversial PR blacklisting debate has written a piece attempting to explain why it happened and how the PR games process works. Last week US PR agency The Redner Group openly stated on Twitter that it would blacklist – as in, stop sending review code – …

We’re all happy to complain about developers being cagey and withholding information but when they do commit the cardinal sin of speaking frankly we run headlines like this. In an interview with GamingUnion, Microsoft Game Studios head Peter Molyneux made the frank and overtly sensible admission that Kinect is not …