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

Neil Young, Seamus Blackley and Chris Taylor amongst the many signed up to present

The unexpected upturn in retail fortunes seen in January has not been carried over to February, with the British Retail Consortium reporting a 1.8 per cent like-for-like drop on the High Street compared to the same month in 2008. Retail Week reports that total sales did grow, at least, increasing …

Bobby Kotick, the chief executive of Activision Blizzard, has admitted that his firm used to see Wii as a secondary platform compared to its publishing activities on Xbox 360 and PS3 – but that’s all about to change. Click here to read the full story on CasualGaming.biz.

Neil Alphonso to oversee studio's new title

Ken Surdan joins online game developer from e-retail industry

The triumph of Sega’s Empire: Total War at the top of the ELSPA GfK-ChartTrack All Formats Top 40 yesterday marks the most successful debut in the history of the Total War series. Week one sales of the title were nearly double those of both Rome: Total War and Medieval II: …

Diabetes UK – one of the parties behind the new Change4Life print ad – has told MCV that it has been left ‘surprised’ by the video games industry’s reaction to the promotion. Since MCV announced that it had filed an official complaint with the ASA regarding the Government’s Change4Life campaign, …

Leading High Street games retailers GAME, HMV and Asda have all pledged to support upcoming games retail event GamePlan, which takes place this June. In addition, the former boss of Woolworths’ games division Gerry Berkley has agreed to work on a consultancy basis with GamePlan. I am delighted to become …

Following last week’s speculation , Microsoft has confirmed that it has appointed former Motorola marketing boss Jeremy Dale as its EMEA vice president of retail sales and marketing for its Entertainment and Devices Division. He will be tasked with expanding the reach of Microsoft’s consumer products, including Xbox and Windows, …

Itâ??s a sad day for Develop. But just in case you need it spelling out: Simon Byronâ??s leaving us...