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

US sales tracker NPD has finally revealed some good news for the struggling music genre. Music game sales are 38 per cent higher in November 2010 than they were during the same period the year before. But it’s not Rock Band 3 or Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock that did …

BioWare’s Mass Effect series will make its PS3 debut on January 21st. EA announced the PS3 version of Mass Effect 2 will arrive in the UK three days after its US release on January 18th, according to IGN. The release date is in keeping with the publisher’s initial promise of …

Call of Duty: Black Ops has broken records in North America, selling 8.4 million units in just one month. It is the biggest launch month for any video game in US history, and is already the seventh best-selling game of all time. Black Ops accounted for 25 per cent of …

Home entertainment distributor MBL Group has posted a 78 per cent dip in profits for the six months ending September 30th. Year-on-year profits dropped from 3.2m to 700,000, while revenues fell from 78.2m to 71.1m. MBL distributes entertainment goods including games, DVDs and CDs to retailers such as Morrisons. It …

Sony has shipped 5.5 million units of Gran Turismo 5 into retail worldwide. That includes 3.56m copies in PAL territories, 1.25m products in the US and 500,000 units in Japan. Overall, there’s been 61m Gran Turismo games sold since the original 1997 release. Gran Turismo sales to date (Worldwide): Gran …

US game sales are up eight per cent in November compared to the year before, NPD has revealed. The industry made $2.99 billion last month, up from $2.7bn the year before. This includes $1.08bn in hardware, $1.46bn in software and $413.3m in accessories. All up from the year before. The …

GAMES RETAIL has never been more challenging, but store managers are confident about their business as the New Year approaches. 85 per cent of retailers say they are positive about the health of their business moving into 2011. This is despite market shrinkage in 2010, several independent retailers closing their …

Wondering what games retail are worried about in the New Year? And what’s been the best thing about 2010 so far? MCV goes behind the tills in its annual retail survey. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR HIGHLIGHT OF THE YEAR FOR GAMES RETAIL? BLACK OPS received the majority of votes this year …

CEO Tomoko Namba says many Japanese tech firms are interested in buyouts abroad

First details emerge ahead of official Spike Video Game Awards reveal this weekend