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

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 …

Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment has licensed Umbra Software’s rendering optimisation toolset to give a speed boost to the long-running project. Umbra gave a significant boost in rendering performance on the Xbox360, and at the same time made our content creation faster,” said Remedy Entertainment’s Development Director Markus Mki. For …

Bethesda Softworks and Take-Two have joined forces to bring a new bundle to retailers, combining two of their most successful games. The new compilation contains Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Take-Two’s BioShock, and will be available from July 10th for 19.99 on PC and 29.99 on Xbox 360. …

Two industry veterans have formed a new games distribution company, Solid Gold Games. Andrew Blumson and Russell Clark have set up the new company after more than a year away from the games industry. The two previously founded Just Distribution. Solid Gold Games will specialise in newly-released software and ‘closeout’ …

Whilst games such as Final Fantasy XIII, Agent and New Super Mario Bros may have been getting the lion’s share of the column inches post-E3, research claims that Microsoft’s Halo 3: ODST is the E3 title that most gamers are interested in buying. Research body Nielsen has published what it …

Gamestation will lose its product director, head of pre-owned and buying boss in August, as its York office is integrated into GAME’s Basingstoke HQ. MCV understands that around 60 central office staff have taken redundancy at the specialist – after almost all employees were offered the chance to re-locate to …