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

EA DICE’s highly-anticipated first-person title Mirror’s Edge missed commercial and critical targets within Electronic Arts, a key exec has said. Frank Gibeau, who inherited the presidency of the EA Games label in 2008, said Mirror’s Edge and horror title Dead space each had some degree of success, but they didn’t …

As many as 19 staff at Newcastle-based Ubisoft Reflections could be leaving the firm as part of a wider restructuring, Ubisoft has confirmed. This number includes several members of the studio’s senior development team. According to a Develop source at the company, currently working on Driver: San Francisco, staff were …

Electronic Arts has no desire to return to the games-film licensing business that it once made a fortune from, a key exec at the firm has said. EA Games label president Frank Gibeau told Develop that film licence-based games, such as James Bond and Lord of the Rings, no longer …

Up to 19 positions go as Ubisoft aims to calm fears of further cuts

Dead Space missed targets too, but made a profit

For someone leading a cutting edge web games firm, Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz has a surprising love-hate relationship with Facebook. As the biggest social network in the world, much of what he calls the big hype” around online games is focused on Facebook’s successes – Zynga and FarmVille or EA’s …

Games Investor analyst Nick Gibson has warned that PlayStation’s expected foray into the world of mobile telephony via a new handset coming from Sony Ericsson could damage cherished gaming brand. With PSP2 SDKs currently being deployed to developers and PSP still selling at surprisingly robust levels (given the miniscule size …

Hundreds expected for December event, with five games speakers set

The lucrative Black Friday shopping week has seemingly proved a very successful period for Nintendo.CVG reports that internal company estimates point to US sales of 900k units for DS and 600k units for Wii in the period between November 21st and November 27th. That represents total sales of 1.5m consoles …

A design for a ‘tactile touchscreen’ that allows users to feel textures as well as see them has been patented by Windows and Xbox platform holder Microsoft. New Scientist reports that the technology uses pixel-sized shape-memory plastic cells that can be ordered to protrude from the surface on command”. Several …