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

â??The time for hard-to-learn, hard-to-use proprietary editing environments is overâ?

Square Enix is positioning Final Fantasy XIV as a serious rival to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft series, company president Yoichi Wada has revealed. In an interview with Develop, Wada disclosed the full extent of Square Enix’s ambitions for the upcoming Final Fantasy MMO, and indicated that Blizzard’s need to – …

With the clock ticking on the rapid approach to Christmas retailers are stepping up their efforts to capture as much consumer spend as they can before the festive spend dries up – and Xbox 360 hardware is the latest to get the discount treatment. Both GAME and HMV are currently …

The president of Square Enix – the increasingly Western-facing Japan-headquartered publishing empire – has refuted the widely held view that the Japanese game industry is in decline. Yoichi Wada is thought to be the first high-profile industry executive that’s publicly spoken in defence of the Japanese industry. If you look …

Indian developer puts weight behind PSP and WiiWare

Digital Sky Technologies adds to its previous $200m injection

A Russian investment firm that previously invested $200m in social network leader Facebook has backed Mafia Wars and FarmVille developer Zynga to the power of $180m. The move means that Zynga now has an approximate valuation of between $1.5bn-$3bn. The fulls tory is on CasualGaming.biz.

Square Enix president says that the firmâ??s westward moves are due to the necessity of globalisation

Publisher EA and Swedish developer DICE have announced that over 3m players have no signed up to the online free-to-play Battlefield Heroes. Battlefield Heroes continues to grow fast with well over 50,000 new players joining us every week,” Battelfield Heroes’ general manager Ben Cousins stated. The full story is over …

Square Enix president outlines move to outplay Blizzardâ??s dominant MMO