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

Modern Warfare 2 may have been the biggest game of December, but publisher Activision still slipped behind Nintendo, EA and Ubisoft in terms of software units sold in the ELSPA GfK-ChartTrack December Charts.

 Wii titles controlled almost a third of the market in terms of unit sales in December, with …

A man who imported over 26,500 R4 DS piracy cards has been given 12 months in prison. Yun Can Meng pleaded guilty to charges of bringing in thousands of the flash devices through Heathrow and Nottingham East Midlands Airport, and selling them on. He committed the offences between June 2008 …

December 2009 wasn’t all about Modern Warfare 2, with Nintendo, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts also enjoying huge sales during the festive period. MCV takes a closer look… SOFTWARE MARKET SHARE BY COMPANY – units (last month in brackets) 1 (2) NINTENDO – 18.7%2 (3) EA – 14.0%3 (4) UBISOFT – 12.4%4 …

â??I could make the entire PixelJunk series with the EA bossâ??s income bonusâ?

Yet by Nintendo’s reckoning there’s still life in the old DS yet. It’s hard to disagree. It was the UK’s best selling games hardware in 2009 – accounting for a massive wedge of the 2.7m handhelds sold in total. With Nintendo readying both bigger and better hardware now on a …

PixelJunk maestro gets the rapid-fire question treatment

Ahead of the implementation of the government’s new video games ratings regime outlined in The Digital Economy Bill later this year The Video Standards Council has outlined a number of high-level staff changes designed to position the regulator for the challenges ahead. The former chief constable of Lincolnshire Police Tony …

Publisher Sega has dated two of its key Q1 titles – Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing and Napoleon: Total War – both of which will be hitting retail on February 26th. The first title is another stab at capturing the Mario Kart Wii crowd, partnering accessible racing mechanics with an …

Mamba Games has announced a partnership with Lace Group to create a new global video games publisher. Publisher Mamba and UK distributor Lace will now trade as Lace Media Group, and will handle acquisition, product development, in-house development, UK and global sales and distribution, marketing and PR as one entity. …

Longstanding British studio Codemasters saw in the New Year in a most unfortunate manner as HM Revenue & Customs served an erroneous petition to wind-up the business. On face value that meant the studio would face going into administration, receivership or liquidation, with Codemasters’ banks under threat of being frozen. …