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

But this generation has delivered a lesson that throws that existence into doubt. It turns out no one ‘owns’ those customers. Gamers can be just as easily distracted by download games via Xbox Live, mobile or social networks as they are by the industry trying to court them. And the …

The health of GAME has long been a good barometer of the wider games market’s fortunes. Because in many respects GAME Group’s customers are the market, and the retailer influences what they want and reacts to what they don’t. When GAME’s buying became conservative, focusing on big hits, publishers slimmed …

Developer Team 17 has launched a licensing program for its classic Worms franchise. The studio has hired agency AT New Media to offer the franchise to licensees, retailers and promoters. The agency says the Worms characters are ideal for toys, books, plush toys, clothing and more. We are very excited …

Microsoft has claimed both another month of strong sales in the US and another month of console market leadership. Following NPD’s January report, the platform holder released a statement confirming Xbox 360 hardware sales of 381k units – that’s up 15 per cent or 48k units year-on-year. Microsoft adds that …

The PS3 version of Portal 2 will not include PlayStation Move support, developer Valve has confirmed. Yesterday a translation of a story on Eurogamer Germany claimed that the studio was planning to implement Move support as "compensation" both for the lack of a PS3 version of Left 4 Dead and …

US sales tracker NPD has released its numbers for the US video games market in January 2011, and they show another period of year-on-year decline. Overall sales hit $1.16bn – a five per cent drop on January 2010. Software sales were down five per cent at $576m while hardware fell …

Forget the fall of Guitar Hero; the music video game sector is stronger than ever, says GfK Chart-Track. The sales tracker says that 2010 was the most successful year for music games in the UK, despite disappointing performances by the various Hero and Rock Band titles. Dance games drove the …

Develop speaks to KPM MusicHouse, the firm that hunts the right artists for each project

Working with Alex Hope of Double Negative since July last year, I’ve had the privilege of leading the largest quantitative research study to date on skills in the video games industry and visual effects. We’ve conducted seven different research strands which covered children, parents, teachers, schools, colleges, universities, employers, employees …

Spacetime Studios CEO offers insight into lessons learned as his team built an ambitious MMO