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

Their name may be based on a defunct practice, but their ideas are cutting edge

Casual games giant Zynga has revealed that it is to launch a public beta for its brand new title CityVille in the coming weeks”.Gamasutra reports that the game will be localised in five different languages – English, German, Italian, Spanish and French. The studio promises that the game will be …

UK technology firm's new label NaturalMotion Games working on Backbreaker 2 and Jenga

Star Wars: Check. Batman: Check. Indiana Jones: Check. Harry Potter: Check. Pirates of the Caribbean: why not? Yep, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films will be the next to receive the LEGO treatment, courtesy of UK developer TT Games. LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game will be published …

GameStop has revealed that sales of pre-owned game products accounted for 47.4 per cent of the company’s profit for the three months ending October 2010. In total pre-owned was worth $528.m, with profit of $250.2m. By comparison profit from new games reached $182.4m (21.7 per cent of the quarter’s total) …

Who said there was a slump in the software market? GameStop has just published its three-month trading report, showing that sales were up nine per cent year on year. Record sales were at $1.9bn for the three months ending October 30th – that’s a jump on the same period last …

Call of Duty: Black Ops is officially the biggest entertainment launch of all-time – and platform holders Microsoft and Sony are delighted with its success. With a record breaking performance on Xbox Live, home to the world’s largest Call of Duty gaming community, Call of Duty: Black Ops has already …

As was revealed by MCV this morning, Activision has confirmed that Black Ops has not just shattered Call of Duty records – it’s also re-written the entertainment launch books. The publisher has revealed that the game sold an astonishing $650m of stock in its first five days on the market. …

Entertainment retailer HMV is to sell Sony’s Gran Turismo 5 for just 4.99 next week to any customer happy to trade-in a copy of Codemasters’ F1 2010 for PS3. The deal will run between the game’s release on Wednesday November 24th and Friday November 26th. The offer echoes the trade-in …

'If shoe fits for film industry why does Government argue it does not for games?'