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

Artificial Intelligence conference readying sessions

The joint Administrators of Zavvi UK have today announced the immediate closure of a further 15 stores. The closures will lead to the redundancy of 295 employees, bringing the total number of jobs lost since the firm went into administration to 889. Administrator Ernst & Young closed 18 stores on …

Sony has posted some grim numbers for its gaming division for the three months ending December 31st 2008 that show falling sales for all three of its current PlayStation consoles. Sales at its games division hit YEN 393.8bn, down 32.2 per cent on the same period in 2007. Unit sales …

UK developer 'adopts more cautious approach to the start of 2009'

With devices converging and game content diverging into different media, thereâ??s more opportunity than ever for cohesive game universes, says FluffyLogicâ??s Ana Kronschnablâ?¦

The following is an excerpt of a story written by John Gaudiosi for www.unrealtechnology.com.

Capcom is to tour UK retailers with the original Street Fighter IV arcade release, giving the public a chance to sample the game in its original form before the February 20th console release. Starting in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gamestation, Capcom has currently confirmed five dates, including a stop at London’s …

As had been previously suggested, a long-awaited new trailer for Final Fantasy XIII has confirmed that the next-gen Square Enix RPG will be released on PS3 in Japan this year. However, as MCV revealed earlier this month, there’s still no word on when the game will be released in either …

With the Japanese market suffering a significant decline in value in 2008 and the UK enjoying record sales, MCV is predicting that the UK games market will by the end of the year grow to become the second most valuable in the world. Whilst the Japanese market was worth 520,000 …

VALUE/TRENDS 2008 Market Value (2007 in brackets)UK – 4.03bn (3.40bn) year-on-year +18.5% USA – 14.89bn (12.51bn) year-on-year +19%Japan – 4.55bn (5.37bn) year-on-year -15% These numbers show that the USA remains by far the single largest video games market in the world, bettering the value of the UK and Japanese markets …