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

The general manager for Xbox in the UK has denied claims that his company is deliberately managing Kinect stock shortages in an effort to drum up hype in the key Christmas shopping season. The accusation was thrown at both Microsoft and Sony last week by US analyst Michael Pachter, who …

Can the publishing giant foster dev independence in a brutal market? We ask games label boss Frank Gibeau

Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops is back at the top of the UKIE GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40 this week, with last week’s number one Gran Turismo 5 having to settle for fourth place in its second week of release. Sony’s racer, though, remains the biggest selling single …

Perhaps deciding that it lacked the appetite for a cat-and-mouse style brawl over the hacking of its new line of Windows Phone 7 devices, Microsoft has come up with a novel way of deterring hackers from cracking its OS. Cnet reports that the platform holder has successfully convinced the creators …

Profoundly blurry pictures and hearsay – as far as the PSP2 goes that’s as concrete as it gets for now, but the evidence is seemingly more than enough for outspoken US analyst Michael Pachter to write off the machine before it’s even revealed. I think the PSP was dead on …

Any scepticism about the validity of pictures published in October has been swept away with the publishing of two videos of Sony Ericsson’s PlayStation Phone. Discovered by Engadget, the first video gives a detailed look at the construction of the device. A second, meanwhile, for the first time looks at …

BBC’s suspicion-raising Panorama documentary on games addiction doesn’t air until Monday night – but details of the broadcast are already leaking out. Reports by the Press Association and the Scotsman today offer a preview of the documentary, and it seems the documentary will look closely at how games ‘trick’ players. …

Publisher Black Bean Games has used its session at the Italian Videogame Developers Conference in Rome to unveil Mel B Dance. Black Bean strategic corporate coordinator Fabrizio Vagliasindi made the announcement, offering ‘the first semester of 2011’ as a release date. The game’s formats were unconfirmed, and no information was …

Phil Harrison has predicted that console quality gaming in web browsers will emerge as the next-gen gaming platform. Speaking at his keynote session at the Italian Videogame Developers Conference in Rome, the London Venture Partners co-founder asked the crowd if they believed they would ever see a game of the …

Electronics giant and platform holder Sony has launched a brand new HD TV that includes a PS2 built-in. Called the Bravia KDL-22PX300, it includes a 22” 720p HD screen as well as four HDMI slots, three USB ports, Scart and VGA connections, built-in Freeview and an ethernet port for watching …