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

Disney will acquire social games giant Playdom for a fee that could rise to $763.2 million. The deal, which was rumoured last week, involves an initial payment of $563.2 million, with a further $200 million dependent on performance. The news comes weeks after Disney swooped for iPhone music game pioneer …

The Mickey Mouse empire splurges on Playdom

Dare to be Digital 2010 team Creative Genius talks exclusively to Develop about working on their entry Silent Symphony.

Develop offers a step by step guide to the Gaikai cloud streaming service...

Though the price GameStop paid for casual games portal giant Kongregate wasn’t divulged as part of the surprise announcement of the acquisition earlier today, one analyst has had a stab at guessing the figure. We view the acquisition of Kongregate as a slight positive for GameStop,” Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter …

Publishers must find a way to monetize sales of pre-owned software if developers are to maintain their ability to expand the potential of games – that’s the warning of Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens. In terms of traditional publishing, the maturing formats have shown rapid decline and portable markets have been …

In January 2010, UK games execs told MCV they were hopeful of a positive start to the New Year. And it was easy to see why: publishers had pushed their big Q4 2009 titles into 2010, and we had a mammoth release slate of blockbuster titles – including BioShock 2, …

Rumours suggest the publisher will deliver four annual titles with its major IPs

A three-volume hardback pictorial history of Rockstar Games’ output has been cancelled, the book’s prospective publisher has confirmed. German publisher Steidl had put an 310 RRP on the collection, though last week the group told Develop that a release date had not yet been confirmed. Yet the publisher has since …

There is no new Bond movie on the horizon, but Activision says it can help plug the gap with two blockbuster Christmas releases. The 23rd Bond movie was postponed indefinitely in April due to uncertainty over the future of film company MGM. But that hasn’t derailed Activision’s plans for the …