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

PEGI – the Pan-European Game Information age rating system – has launched a free iPhone app that allows users to view ratings on the move. It’s designed to help parents make informed buying decisions on video games with a series of PEGI age and content labels. These inform the buyer …

Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot believes roughly half of the games released for Xbox 360 and PS3 will be 3D compatible by 2012. During yesterday’s investors call, he warned that 3D titles such as the publisher’s own James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game are likely to become a more common occurrence, according to …

Latest buyout adds to Playdomâ??s growing fleet of studios

Phil Harrison, the eminent game exec who helped shape the PlayStation empire, has rebounded from his Atari break-up by joining London Venture Partners – a new investment group focused on funding disruptive” game projects. Harrison has joined the company as General Partner, uniting once again with former Atari CEO David …

Policy changes not all bad for devs, says tech firm COO

Unannounced project in development at Brisbane outfit

Social networking site and casual games studio begin to rebuild ties after difficult few weeks

The sixth in Square Enix’s popular Kingdom Hearts franchise – Birth by Sleep – will hit retail as a PSP exclusive on September 10th. Kingdom Hearts games have sold more than 14m copies worldwide since the self-titled original was released on the PS2 in 2002. They became well known for …

French publisher Ubisoft has reported sales of €871m for the year ending March 31st 2010 – a decrease of 18 per cent year-on-year. Operating losses hit €60m, compared to an operating income of €128.7m in the same period the year before. Net losses totalled €44m, down from 08/09’s €68.8m profit. …

Epic Games has cited piracy as the key explanation behind group’s transformation from dedicated PC development to console-focused work. "If you walked into [Epic’s Offices] six years ago, Epic was a PC company,” the group’s president Mike Capps told Edge Magazine. ”We did one PS2 launch title, and everything else …