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

Google is continuing to invest heavily in social gaming firms ahead of a widely expected reveal of its new games division. The search engine giant has now acquired Canadian start-up studio SocialDeck, following recent buyouts of fellow social game groups Jambool and Slide, as well as reportedly investing some $200 …

SCEA has released pictures of its Limited Edition God of War: Ghost of Sparta Entertainment Pack, which has confirmed for launch in the US on November 2nd. The SKU will include a two-coloured red and black PSP-3000, a copy of the game, a voucher to download a full copy of …

Project manager Erik Johnson on turning a quaint puzzle game into a triple-A product

Nintendo has confirmed that it is to cut $20 off the price of its two most recent versions of the DS in North America from September 12th. The DSi will drop from $169.99 to $149.99 and the larger DSi XL will fall from $189.99 to $169.99. The older DS will …

Popular game website vendor to build its mobile business on HTML5

Shin Megami Tensei publisher Atlus has been dissolved by its parent company Index Holdings. Gamasutra reports that the label may, however, live on in one form or another with Index pledging to to streamline its business focus to profitable core areas”. The company acquired Atlus in November 2006. Atlus is …

The company behind the controversial PSJailbreak, a device that allows users to play homebrew and pirated code on PS3 for the first time, has asserted its position in the face of Sony’s legal challenge to the product. Last week Sony was been granted a temporary injunction preventing the importing or …

As a further foray into the growing digital space, retailer GAME has officially launched its new GAME Downloader PC software. Upon installation, the program scans a user’s PC to identify all the installed games. These are then recorded and every time a patch or expansion becomes available the user is …

Despite having shot straight to the top of the ELSPA GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40 this week, US analyst Michael Pachter thinks that 2K Games’s Mafia II will ultimately fail to deliver for the publisher. The continued strength from Red Dead Redemption is offsetting weakness from weak Mafia II …

Vision Engine 8 platform adds Substance Air and Redux