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

Media giant explains motivations for sell-off; says studio sale will be quick

Call of Duty: Black Ops has made $360m in one day in the US and UK, besting sales of Modern Warfare 2. The Treyarch-developed FPS has sold 5.6m units across both North America and the UK. Almost a million more than the 4.7m units Modern Warfare 2 sold over the …

â??Sickâ?? days off reduced to just 2.5 per cent of total work hours

Rock Band creator no longer wanted

Just four years after it bought the studio for an amazing $175m, Viacom has said it wants to sell off music game studio Harmonix. The corporate parent that owns the likes of MTV and Paramount, said today in an earnings statement that it had seen a third-quarter dip in earnings. …

Loss-making publisher looks to spread its business across XBLA, PSN And PC

The London Games Festival saw a whopping 76,000 people attend its various games events. Between September 31st and November 4th, a range of politicians, industry figures, journalists, PRs and consumers took part in 26 events that ranged from expos and exhibitions to lectures, conferences and award ceremonies. The 2010 LGF …

The Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit demo has been downloaded 2m times in just two weeks, EA confirmed today. Players clocked up more than 54m miles of road racing and over 20m successful police busts from the day the demo arrived on October 26th to November 9th. During the course …

As a follow-up to today’s story that UK games retailers are threatening to drop Steam-integrated video games, we are reprinting industry consultant Nicholas Lovell’s article from May this year. In his piece, originally published on Gamesbrief, Lovell discusses the five reasons why Steam will destroy the PC games industry. In …

Online games developer and publisher K2 has acquired the APB IP from the administrator of collapsed Dundee studio Realtime Worlds, inside sources have told Develop. California based K2 Network, a heavily VC-funded company responsible for the free-to-play service GamersFirst, has reportedly spent in the region of 1.5 million for the …