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

Some 250 game firms hire 14,000 industry pros across the nation, study says

Britain’s MPs have been criticised for the poor turnout for yesterday’s discussion about the controversial Digital Economy Bill. The Telegraph reports that at its peak only 40 MPs were present in the Commons for the DEB debate, and this sank as low as just 15 Parliamentary members at one point. …

The speedy and seismic shift towards digital retail that has enveloped the music sector is unlikely to be replicated in the games industry according to Take-Two CEO Ben Feder. While an ever-growing segment of our fans are comfortable with acquiring content digitally, the retail channel will continue to play a …

Take-Two took a chance on digital downloads and new IP last year, and posted better than expected Q1 figures as a result. But can the publisher really hope to return to profitability without a new GTA on the horizon? Christopher Dring speaks to CEO Ben Feder about the firm’s plans …

300k sales on day one have ensured that Apple is very happy with the US launch of the iPad, but ongoing reports of wi-fi connectivity issues have dampened what has otherwise been a tremendous success for the tech company. The large number of complaints about sporadic or inexplicably weak wi-fi …

Ahead of the inevitable ‘games give you cancer’ headlines that are surely just around the corner, the latest ill pinned on video games is the accusation that they can give you bad teeth. Specifically, Kotaku reports that a study by the University of Iowa has linked playing games regularly to …

Sales of the Apple iPad are expected to reach 20m units by 2012, according to predictions from analyst iSuppli. More specifically, the firm expects unit sales to hit 7.1m by the end of the year and 14.4m by the close of 2011. It adds that these numbers are ‘conservative’ estimates …

Growing list of confirmed lectures, keynotes and panel discussions

In news that can only mean good things for Sony’s PS3, sales of Blu-ray discs in North America have shown an impressive year-on-year increase for the three months ending March 31st. Sales of Blu-ray discs in the period hit $331.31m, a massive 68.5 per cent year-on-year increase. In total Blu-ray …

Square Enix’s Just Cause 2 may have missed out to the evergreen Just Dance in the All Formats chart, but it still dominates the console charts. The open-world action game holds onto the top spot of both the Xbox 360 and PS3 charts for a second week, and retains a …