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

Market analyst DFC Intelligence has warned that Kinect is unlikely to help Xbox 360 break into the mass market in the way in which Microsoft hopes, according to the company’s latest report. The Xbox 360 clearly needs to diversify beyond the core first-person shooter audience,” it reads. Microsoft is putting …

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 racks up a second week at the top of the ELSPA GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40. The game held Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption at bay, still in second place, as well as a number of new entries. Three new titles debuted in the Top …

The mid-year report from leading reviews aggregation site Metacritic suggests that while sales might be suffering year-on-year gamers have so far in 2010 enjoyed better quality games that were on offer the year before. So far this year seven titles have achieved review score averages of 90 per cent or …

Lionhead boss will explore the design pillars of the highly-anticipated title

Dan Teasdale returns to design roots at Twisted Pixel

E3 saw the games business out in force in California, home to Hollywood and Disneyland, to flaunt an industry producing content that can match the production values and market potential of some of the world’s biggest blockbuster movies. Disney was there for opposite reasons. The group has a famous track …

New research claims that consumers consider physical product to be more important in games than in newspapers, films or music. A survey of over 1,000 people by research firm Ipsos MediaCT found that 64 per cent preferred physical discs for their games over digital copies. Newspapers followed closely with 63 …

Online leader Amazon has once again been named as the biggest etailer in the UK by analyst Experian HitWise. TechRadar reports that Amazon has claimed the top spot every year since the firm started producing the league table. Catalogue specialist Argos claimed second place just ahead of entertainment giant Play.com …

EGDF president rejects concerns that cultural tax breaks may have negative impact

We expect investors to remain spooked by the May results, as they are beginning to reinforce the notion that the video game industry is in a state of persistent secular decline.” That’s the somewhat startling assessment of famed games analyst Michael Pachter in light of further declines in the US …