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

Global Xbox Live boss John Schappert will leave Microsoft on July 14th for Electronic Arts – two years after quitting the Redwood giant for the platform holder. Schappert will become COO at EA, replacing John Pleasants, who vacates the publisher. Schappert will be responsible for Worldwide Publishing, the Online Platform …

Head over to the RETAIL BIZ Previews section for our take on the most promising titles heading to retail in the near future. This week, Ubisoft’s Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood shakes up the FPS genre by taking gamers back to the Wild West. Expect tense shootouts and frantic …

DCMS confirms that the proposed â??culturally Britishâ?? game tax test will be based on the current film test

Publisher Sega has promoted Naoya Tsurumi to the head of its consumer business for Europe, Japan and America. The firm has also confirmed that Sega Europe boss Mike Hayes will take the newly created role of president and COO of both Sega America and Sega Europe, as revealed by MCV …

With the Jasper iteration of the Xbox 360’s innards now well and truly out in the market, it transpires that Microsoft has now sneaked a bit of extra memory onto the motherboard’s architecture. When the Japser iteration of the Xbox 360 (identifiable by the 150w power rating on the box’s …

Early buyers of Microsoft’s upcoming FPS Halo 3: ODST will be rewarded with a code that will let them unlock multiplayer character Sergeant Avery Junior Johnson. Bungie’s prequel shooter now boasts a full-length single-player campaign depicting the events leading up to Halo 3, all of which will be playable co-operatively …

Games publishers are already manufacturing games boxes with PEGI’s ‘traffic light’ ratings on their cover – and hope to have the symbols on UK  boxes by the end of this summer. All new games released in Europe will feature the colour-coded symbols, after the UK Government gave the green light …

APB developer sees staff count reach 250 with plans to reach 300 by early 2010

Develop has launched its comprehensive guide to the key game changers in Lord Carterâ??s report

Short of temporarily buying up all of the world’s net servers, Apple could never completely guarantee a smooth global rollout of the new iPhone 3.0 OS, but all things considered last night’s 6pm release went remarkably smoothly. The only major hitch in the process came courtesy of mobile operator O2 …