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

Korean developer Softmax has announced its Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Magna Carta: Crimson Stigma will be published by Namco Bandai. Crimson Stigma is the sequel to the studio’s 2002 RPG, which proved to be a big hit in Korea and Japan. The company has yet to confirm a release date …

Publisher Square Enix has confirmed that a demo of Final Fantasy XIII will be included with the Blu-ray release of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in Japan. The news first appeared in Japanese gaming bible Famitsu. However, there are currently no plans to run a similar promotion in other territories. …

Demonstrating the increasing convergence between the concepts and technology of game development and the commercial demands of training, simulation and serious gaming markets comes Worldweaverâ??s DX Studio.

Branch integration previews and rollback feature head improvement charge

Microsoft’s group product manager for Xbox 360 Aaron Greenberg has stated that the strong sales enjoyed by his firm’s console over the Christmas period has been mirrored by some equally impressive growth of the company’s Xbox Live digital platform. We saw year-over-year online consumer spending on Live grow 84 per …

Microsoft’s group product manager for Xbox 360 Aaron Greenberg has stated that Xbox 360 and PS3 were neck and neck” in sales terms until Microsoft’s aggressive European hardware price cutting lead to a significant sales increase in the region. While we had a pretty large lead – around five million …

Developer to hand long-running skateboarding series to new studio

Video games are set to eclipse” all other forms of media entertainment, according to Activision Blizzard’s president and CEO of publishing Mike Griffith. During his keynote speech at CES 2009, Griffith boasted games are prospering as demand for almost every other entertainment category declines, according to the BBC. He claimed …

Patent application reveals â??Kind Codeâ?? hand-holding system

Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith has claimed that 2007’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has now surpassed a sales value of $1bn – a milestone the exec claims has never before been achieved by a single title, Edge Online reports. Click here to read the full story.