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

Online retail giant Amazon has refused to rule out the possibility of video games downloads becoming available on the site in the New Year. Amazon launched its online music downloads service – a direct rival to iTunes – on December 3rd. Amazon MP3 sells tracks from 59p and albums from …

The death knell has rung for Woolworths – with administrators Deloitte confirming that all 807 remaining stores will be closed down by January 5th. The first stores will close on December 27th – and in more sad news for the firm, all 27,000 permanent and temporary staff will lose their …

Japanese DS streaming technology proving popular with developers

Facial animation firm to improve technology, service offerings and newly formed divisions

Update adds compressed audio playback, optimisations

Harmonix has announced the Wii version of Rock Band 2 will be released in the US on December 18th, and apologised to its community for the delay in the process. A member of the development team posted the news on the official forums, saying: We want to apologise for the …

After the fireworks of 2007, the past 12 months was a comedown for games industry deal watchers.

US electronics chain Best Buy has reported its 2009 Q3 fiscal results, with revenues jumping 16 per cent to $11.5 billion for the week ending November 29th 2008. The revenues jump follows the opening of 181 new European stores over the past 12 months, however, earnings have plummeted year-on-year from …

Atari president Phil Harrison has told MCV that he wants to leave Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick red-faced for dumping the Ghostbusters game. The title, which Atari announced it had picked up this month, was originally on Vivendi’s release schedule before the ‘merger’ between the company and Activision in December …

Users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service will be able to log in and download a free Live Arcade title called Dash of Destruction today – thanks to a Doritos competition held last year. Doritos Unlock Xbox was won by Mike Borland, and his prize was to see experienced XBLA developer …