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

The North American video games market has once again defied the global credit crunch by showing significant year-on-year gains for the month of February – and Nintendo is the company that continues to impress. Figures from NPD showed that February was up 10 per cent compared to the same month …

Halo Wars, the Ensemble Studios RTS released for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 last month, has now sold over one million copies across the globe, the platform holder has confirmed. To date the title has seen 2.6m multiplayer matches played online, totalling up more than 118 years of total playtime. On average, …

Atari founder opens Game Based Learning event with warning for educators

HRH The Princess Royal today formally opened the highly impressive Paddington Academy. One of the games industry’s greatest charitable achievements, the specialist school for performing arts, media, business and enterprise was co-funded by the United Learning Trust and GamesAid (formerly the Entertainment Software Charity). The games industry has already donated …

Nintendo may publicly claim that it doesn’t consider the likes of Apple’s App Store and iPhone, or even the Google G1 phone and Android Marketplace, as competitors – but MCV sister site Develop understands the format holder is very much working on its own ‘app strategy’. Sources which attended the …

Top execs from all over the market are to star in the kick-off video for this year’s MCV Awards. Names are staying secret until the big night, but various staff and senior management from Nintendo, Xbox, Disney, EA, Activision, GAME, Ubisoft, CHIPS, Gamestation, Bethesda, Atari and Codemasters all feature. Last …

Format-holder tells studios to make small-scale handheld applications, Develop understands

Chinese outsource now offers improved services, says CEO

Latest version of foliage generator is 'first complete rewrite'

Casual games firm TiltFactor has released a new casual title based on the current economic crisis and, more specifically, the worrying level of unemployment sweeping to the global workplace. Entitled ‘Layoff’ the game is based on the successful Bejeweled template, and sees players matching up lines of three or more …