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

With just a week to go before the official Christmas number one is revealed, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: World at War has enjoyed its fifth consecutive week at the top of the ELSPA GfK-ChartTrack All Formats Top 40. The WWII epic fought off stiff competition from Mario Kart Wii, …

Various sources across the industry are speculating that EA’s Black Box studio in Canada may soon be closed. Speculation from unnamed sources also suggests that because of the less than favourable nature of reviews of Need For Speed: Undercover, which also suffered relatively poor sales compared to previous iterations of …

Speculation about studioâ??s closure rife in the wake of EAâ??s job cuts

UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph this weekend published its extensive 50 Best Games of 2008 list, and Microsoft and Lionhead’s Fable II was the paper’s pick of the bunch for standout titles over the last 12 months. The hardcore centric list leads with two of the year’s biggest RPGs – …

Nordic Game Programme distributes funding to a final clutch of projects for 2008

Grand Theft Auto developer and publisher Rockstar has announced that its debut DS outing for the series, entitled GTA: Chinatown Wars, will be released in Europe on March 20th. The game is set to arrive at North American retail slightly earlier – March 17th. Rockstar had previously hinted that the …

Labour MP for West Bromwich East and parliamentary secretary for the cabinet office Tom Watson has leapt to the defence of gaming, claiming that he’d rather his son sat in front of a console than simply started at the TV. The Mirror quotes Watson as stating: Basically, I think playing …

Nintendo has revealed its Q1 line-up for 2009, with the launch of its New Play Control! range in February updating classic GameCube titles for Wii. Starting with Pikmin on February 6th, this series of games brings key titles from the Wii’s predecessor to Nintendo’s current bestselling console, now presented in …

Daxter studio considering U-turn on departure from PSP development

A handy list of the key news highlights in the year casual gaming got serious