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

Having opened its first ever EA Sports Active-dedicated retail outlet earlier this month, EA has told MCV that it sees the stores as the best possible way of promoting its game in the modern games industry landscape. Data showed that 80 per cent of our consumers were recommending EA Sports …

Media Molecule has picked up yet another award for its seminal playground platformer LittleBigPlanet, this time receiving a BAFTA Children’s award. The Media Molecule team was up against esteemed competition in the videogame category, with each nomination tellingly having worked on new IP for the current generation of consoles. LittleBigPlanet …

Giant consumer site Gamespot has launched what it claims is the UK’s first dedicated real-time tool to measure consumer interest in video games. GameSpot Trax will follow the behavior of more than 4.5 million UK gamers on the site, allowing the firm to create UK-specific data on ‘what’s hot and …

Sony has revealed it hopes to have 500 comics ready for the launch of the PSP’s comic store. As stated in Sony’s European PlayStation blog, the platform holder will release comics from publishers 2000AD, Disney, IDW, Insomnia, iVerse, Marvel and Titan. And that they will ‘announce some more great publishers …

LittleBigPlanet sees off Viva Piñata, Boom Blox Bash Party and de Blob for top prize

So CEO Yoichi Wada’s comments to us last week about the potential death of the home console should not to be dismissed as outlandish. He says the trade’s bread and butter sales and distribution forces will be hit hard by the oncoming tidal wave of browser games and online distribution. …

Approximately one million Last.FM profiles have been created through the new Xbox Live social media update. The number of gamers using the customisable online music service is considerably higher than the 500,000 originally announced by Microsoft last week, according to Game Informer. These users have streamed a combined 120 million …

It’s as you were at the top of the ELSPA GfK-ChartTrack All Formats Top 40 this week with Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 spending its third week at the top of the listings despite a 32 per cent week-on-week drop in sales. You can read the full Top …

Key reference points for industry execs

UK-based scribe picks up gong for work on Prince of Persia