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

It looks as if the recent update to the Xbox 360 UI was more than simply preparation for the arrival of Kinect – it’s also dealt a big blow to the piracy community on the console. Xbox 360 piracy typically works by altering the firmware for the internal DVD drive, …

Prime Minister probed again on the controversial tax break u-turn

A stabbing wake-up call was dealt to the UK games industry today with new independent data revealing that the sector’s workforce has contracted by nearly nine per cent since 2008. The extraordinary rate of decline – revealed for the first time in the latest issue of Develop – represents thousands …

Casual games giant spreads into Googleâ??s mobile operating system

Tuesday and Wednesday next week just might be the most lucrative two days in games retail history. On Tuesday, November 9th Activision will launch Call of Duty: Black Ops – the follow-up to the UK’s biggest selling game. The very next day Kinect for Xbox 360 hits shelves – complete …

EA UK has spent over 3m on its David Beckham-fronted Sports Active 2 ad push. And that number doesn’t include the fee paid to the England football superstar. EA hopes that Becks can help its big budget fitness title become the must-own workout product this Christmas. The first TV ad …

Bigpoint boss says if youâ??re going to start up a social firm, make it in the US

As part of last night’s fincnaicl report, publisher THQ has stated that the sequel to its successful new action IP Darksiders won’t be out until the company’s fiscal 2013 period. This dates its release, which despite some reports was announced was back in February, as any time between April 2012 …

Publisher THQ has reported increased losses of $47m for its second quarter ending September 30th. That’s up on the $5.6m loss it registered in the same quarter a year before. Net sales hit $77m, somewhat down on the $101m reported in 2009. Unusually, it was Nintendo’s DS that performed the …

As Kinect goes on sale for the first time in America today, Microsoft has significantly increased its projected sales for the device in the current quarter. In September product director Aaron Greenberg predicted that Kinect would sell in excess of 3m units” this Q4. However, Bloomberg reports that Microsoft has …