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

Downloadable PC sensation Minecraft is to officially exit alpha phase and enter beta on December 20th, creator Marcus Persson has confirmed. In addition, the cult developer has stated that he plans to add some kind of non-intrusive narrative to the game to help drive the game experience early on, and …

SCEE president Andrew House has deep reservations over digital downloading. He acknowledges that digital is becoming an increasingly important part of the games market, but believes it still has significant challenges to overcome. The reason retail has been around for thousands of years is because it works really well at …

Epic Games’ first fully-fledged iOS game has become the fastest grossing App Store title of all time, according to independent data. Infinity Blade, which runs on a modified Unreal Engine for smartphones, is said has generated $1,625,000 in just 4 days. News site Appmodo suggests the sales spree makes Infinity …

New NESTA survey shows parents, pupils and even teachers disregard maths, art and physics

New Elder Scrolls project may have been given a helping hand by Id Software

PC MMO title World of Warcraft: Cataclysm sold 3.3m copies in its first 24 hours on sale, developer Blizzard has announced. The company says the numbers make it the best selling PC title of all time. Previous WoW release Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8m copies in its first …

What does it mean for the humble indie when Epic Games delivers the fastest-grossing App Store game in its first real attempt?

With Mass Effect 2 preparing to land on PS3 on January 21st 2011 – one year after its debut on Xbox 360 and PC – EA has confirmed that the next game in the series will not suffer a similar delay. Mass Effect 3 will be released on PS3, Xbox …

To mark its tenth successive year in business Gameseek has given its website a major overhaul. The specialist internet retailer says it is also increasing its product range as it looks to reach new consumers. Gameseek now stocks over 230,000 products consisting of the latest video games on multiple formats, …

SCEE chief Andrew House claims Microsoft will ‘hit a wall’ when creating new games for Kinect. He says Sony learnt from the EyeToy that only a limited number of experiences can be had with cameras, adding that this isn’t a problem he has with Move. We pioneered camera-based gaming with …