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

Mad Catz has announced a new partnership with Nintendo of America to produce officially licensed accessories for the company’s various platforms. Under the new agreement, the peripherals vendors will be able to develop and market a range of products for Wii, DS and DSi. These will then be distributed throughout …

Nintendo is preparing one of its biggest marketing campaigns of 2009 for Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box, which it is confident will also increase sales of the original title in the series. A heavyweight TV campaign that will air in two bursts is the main focus. Firstly, ads will run …

Milan event for studios back next month

A new study from SquareTrade claims that the Nintendo Wii is by far and away the most reliable console in the current generation of machine – and Xbox 360 is unsurprisingly named as the most prone to failure. The report, named Game Console Failure Rates, claims that just 2.7 per …

New design and pre-viz firm opens in Gateshead

As suggested by MCV yesterday, Microsoft has replicated its recent moves in both Europe and the US by dropping the price of Xbox 360 hardware in Japan. And, like in North America, the platform holder has not increased the price of its Arcade SKU – a move that seems to …

New Odroid system built on iPhone 3GS CPU

UK publisher Codemasters has chosen not to renew its deal to operate MMO ArchLord in the West – though the game will not be closing with Webzen stepping in to take control of the service. A Codemasters statement on the ArchLord forum reads: Our licence for ArchLord is due to …

MMO to be transferred to Webzen next month as Codies closes Western servers on October 2nd

Natal dev kits are installed across Take-Two’s entire fleet of subsidiary studios, according to the publisher’s CEO. Take-Two chief Ben Feder confirmed in last night’s financial call that numerous studios are working with Microsoft’s new interface. Obviously can’t comment on games that we haven’t announced but those [Natal] dev kits …