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

Burgeoning UK games publisher 505 Games is to enter the increasingly competitive girl-gamers market on DS with the announcement of its new The Academy range, which is due to arrive on Nintendo’s portable DS in mid 2009. CasualGaming.biz has the full story – you’re just a single mouse click away.

Nintendo is expecting the nation’s post-Christmas health push to drive sales of Wii Fit in January – but has told MCV that there may be stock shortages during the month. The title, which comes with the Wii Balance Board, secured the No. 10 spot in the ChartTrack/ELSPA Christmas top ten …

TT Games acquisition deemed 'wildly successful'

Japanese games developer and publisher Konami has announced that it is to release its first title designed to work with Nintendo’s Wii Fit accessory the Wii Balance Board this April – Marbles! Balance Challenge. For the complete story, click here to precariously wobble your way over to CasualGaming.biz.

Do you have a pic of your sales director doing the dosey doe with Lara Croft? Was your store manager ever snapped burning his Carmageddon POS stuff? Perhaps your MD had his arms round a man dressed as Croc – with a face that said ‘this is definitely going to …

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 …