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

Virgin Gaming is now the official provider of online tournaments for EA Sports. Virgin’s tournament platform will now integrate directly with certain EA Sports titles, it will offer community tools and web functionality for competitive play across Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. The first tournaments will begin early this year …

Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption may have picked up various ‘game of the year’ awards, but which titles topped the charts in terms of units sold? Gfk Chart-Track’s Top 50 data has revealed that Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops was the biggest game of 2010, followed by …

THQ core games boss reveals concerns for future platform releases

Disney has confirmed that it has closed Vancouver-based Propaganda Games. The studio had been working on the halted Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned game on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Disney also confirmed that all work on film tie-in Tron: Evolution has been finished. The news comes …

Norton is giving MCV readers the chance to win a Lotus Elise sports car, as well as Apple iPads. Registered users of the Norton Partner Portal who have completed at least one of the available trainings have the chance to win a Lotus by collecting coupons for each Norton product …

Comedian and TV/radio presenter Iain Lee will host this year’s MCV Industry Excellence Awards. Lee returns to the stage at The Brewery on Thursday, April 7th after first hosting in 2007. As well as being a funny guy, Lee is an avid gamer. He currently hosts a two-hour show on …

In a brave move, Windows Phone 7 platform holder Microsoft has reached out to hacker George ‘Geohot’ Hotz with the offer of a free handset. Hotz declared on his blog yesterday that he intends to buy a Windows Phone 7 device. In reply, Brandon Watson, an entrepreneur currently working for …

The biggest names in the music industry has thrown its support behind trouble entertainment chain, HMV. In a letter to The Times, the seven biggest names in music – including Universal chairman David Joseph, Sony Music’s Ged Doherty and Warner Music UK chief executive Christian Tattersfield – praised the retailer …

Vancouver studio closes for business following project cancellations

Nintendo, Microsoft, EA and others sign up to San Francisco networking event