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

Leading UK supermarket chain Tesco has responded to news of GAME’s 3DS stock purchase plan with a short, dismissive statement. An internal memo was leaked onto the internet yesterday showing that GAME instructed employees about an optional plan to buy low price 3DS consoles from Tesco and then sell them …

N.O.V.A. 2 will be exclusive to Xperia Play when the phone is released later this week. The follow-up to Gameloft’s acclaimed iPhone sci-fi FPS will be released for other Android devices after one month, according to Pocket Gamer. The original title was highly popular on iPhone and was later ported …

Tech blog Digital Foundry claims to have word that the "updated disc format" being trailed on Xbox 360 adds around 1GB of extra capacity to DVD discs. It says the new standard is called XBG3. Current Xbox 360 discs have a capacity of 7.95GB, though 1.15GB of this is dedicated …

Almost every games platform on the market saw declining hardware sales this week. This is most likely due to the ongoing impact of the recent earthquake. Reports have emerged that the PSP has been suffering from supply problems, but it is unclear how much the disaster has played in this. …

Developer Irem has stopped production of its Disaster Report games following Japan’s tsunami and earthquake. The firm previously announced that the fourth game in its apocalyptic earthquake series had been cancelled following the devastation in Japan earlier this month. It was scheduled to be released on PS3. Now Andriasang is …

Slant 6 Games collaborating with Capcom

SCE UK has welcomed a new marketing manager to its team this week. Mark Bowles has moved over from SCEE, where he has worked for five years. He was product manager for Gran Turismo and responsible for the popular GT Academy competition. Bowles was subsequently promoted to senior brand manager …

The games industry raised over 800 at this month’s GamesAid darts evening. More than 50 members of the industry stepped up to the oche. The big winners were Beautiful Game Studios’ Ben Nelson and Stephen Morrison. GamesAid vice chairman Caroline Miller told MCV: Plans are afoot for another one – …

Developer cancels production on Disaster Report series

Kenji Matsubara, the former Tecmo Koei CEO, is to join Zynga’s Japanese business arm. Matsubara will begin his duties on May 9th. The social studio’s current CEO of Japan operations, Robert Goldberg, will step down but is said will advise Matsubara in a consultancy role. Goldberg said he was very …