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

Books-a-Million has announced it has started selling video games. The US retailer now stocks games in some of its 200-plus stores spread throughout the American South and Northeast, according to Gamasutra. The titles stock initially seem to be pre-owned titles, although it is unclear where the stock originates from. It …

id Software lead programmer tinkering with camera-controller

Mobile games publisher Chillingo, barely known a year ago but now ubiquitous thanks to Angry Birds, beat off the challenge of established powerhouses to claim the Best Games Company gong at last night’s ME Awards. In doing so it successfully beat off rivals such as Gameloft and its new owners …

Longstanding indie outfit will fight on, CEO says

Developer Valve has announced a new release date for Portal 2. The game had originally been planned for some time late this year, but in June Valve announced that the title had slipped until an unspecified time in 2011. The sequel to the ground-breaking title that won over 30 game …

Nintendo’s 25th Anniversary Mario Wii has gone down a storm in Japan during its first week on sale. The new limited edition console – which comes bundled with a WiiMote Plus, a copy of New Super Mario Bros Wii and a digital copy of Donkey Kong – helped lift week-on-week …

GAME and Tesco begin selling range of gift cards that can be redeemed against game purchases on social network

New title CityVille to launch across continents

Facebook’s push into the games sector has gone physical today as game retailer GAME and supermarket Tesco both introduce Facebook Credit gift cards in store. GAME will sell the cards in denominations of 5, 10 and 25 while Tesco will offer the 10 and 20 versions. The supermarket expects to …

As Call of Duty flew of shelves, Viacom waved the white flag on games, announcing plans to sell off prize studio Harmonix – just a matter of days after the team’s praised Rock Band 3 and Dance Central games arrived. The console game business requires an expertise we do not …