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

Future Publishing has restated that the already-lamented closure of PC Zone is still only a proposal. The company is currently in talks with the magazine’s staff to determine the fate of the magazine, and has yet to announce a final decision. Unless another solution is found, the publication will close …

Leading online book retailer Amazon has said that digital books have been consistently outselling” hardback books throughout the last three months in the US. It says that throughout the period it has been selling 143 e-books for every 100 hardback novels sold in Q2 2010. In the last month alone …

The total value of the social network games market will reach $1.5bn by 2014, according to a new report from Screen Digest. In 2009 that total stood at around $639m with 500m active monthly users, suggesting that the sector is set to grow by over 100 per cent in the …

New technical showcase event preparations roll on in France

Having only made the jump to 33.4GB in January, electronics manufacturer Sharp has confirmed that it intends to launch the first commercially available 100GB capacity Blu-ray disc this month. PC World reports that the units will go on sale in Japan on July 30th and are expected to cost in …

Fully-rigged characters can be created online within minutes, group says

New legislation proposed by Californian Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger that would see the sale of violent games to US minors outlaw has received the official backing of 11 US states. Gamasutra reports that a brief has been filed by the attorney generals of Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, …

Studio boss says itâ??s â??almost impossibleâ? to score mid-90s with iterative sports games

PlayStation Home looks set to get a huge boost – thanks to a deal that will see a number of indie games hits republished in the virtual world. Working with Codename, an independent publisher formed by the team that curates the IndieCade events run at E3 and GameCity in Nottingham, …

EA his lifted the lid on the fifth iteration of its popular boxing series with the announcement of Fight Night Champion, which is due to hit Xbox 360 and PS3 some time in 2011. Details remain thin on the ground, but the publisher seems to be making most noise about …