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

Turbulent publisher Atari has announced the appointment of John Hayase as its senior vice president of product development. He joins from Sony Online Entertainment where he served as executive director of development and studio head, working on titles such as EverQuest and Free Realms. His job will see him overseeing …

A new payment option has been quietly rolled out onto Valve’s digital distribution portal Steam that allows users to pay money into their accounts to be used at a later date. Funds can be added in 4, 8, 18, 35 and 70 increments and can be spent against any item …

New service allows users to upload funds that can then be used for purchases at a later date

Former Sony man John Hayase to take on new role at French firm

Five growing digital game studios star in The Guardianâ??s Tech media invest 100

A study by The Nielsen Company – which was commissioned by EA – claims that a recent Gatorade promotion run in conjunction with EA Sports saw an average increase in household spend on the product of 24 per cent. The report isolated households that had purchased either NHL 09/10, NBA …

Keen Nintendo enthusiasts will be pleased with the latest addition to the UK arm of the Club Nintendo store – a Wii compatible version of the SNES joypad. A variant on the already available Classic Controller, the peripheral first made an appearance on the Japanese version of the Club Nintendo …

Studio reveals the challenges in expanding a boutique title into a AAA blockbuster

Nintendo has revealed that it is to launch three new colour variants of the DSI XL in the UK. On the way are yellow, green and blue versions of the XL-sized handheld, all of which will be launched on October 8th. These join the already available wine red and dark …

Epic Games’ first foray into the App Store business has returned some positive numbers. The company’s vice president Mark Rein has revealed that Epic Citadel – the group’s debut iPhone and iPad app – has been downloaded over a million times. Epic Citadel is a public tech demo of the …