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

Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: World at War has swept last week’s number one title Gears of War 2 from the top of the UK charts. With many retailers aggressively boasting cut-price offers on the latest in the best-selling FPS franchise, it’s little wonder the title has taken the top …

Dutch publisher Playlogic has reported disappointing figures for its fiscal third quarter which show revenues of 740,000 – a number that’s 70 per cent down on the revenues reported in the same period last year. Gross profits were also down significantly, hitting just 200,000 – substantially down on the previous …

Animal rights activists PETA have launched a microsite entitled Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals which is designed to encourage consumers to contact Majesco, the North American publisher of popular casual title Cooking Mama, to voice their concerns on the ethical treatment of animals. To read PETA’s statement, and see where …

Dave Pottinger, the tech boss at ill-fated Microsoft owned studio and Halo Wars developer Ensemble, has stated that the long-rumoured Halo MMO had been green lit and was well underway before the Xbox 360 platform holder pulled the plug on the project. Developmag.com has the full story – click here …

Ensemble team working on title was up to nearly 40 people; game model was based on World of Warcraft

Manchester, UK-based independent establishes team to back MMO plans

Studio founder happy that team has returned to British ownership

Co-developer of id Softwareâ??s new Wolfenstein title joins UK development body

PC publisher Ascaron is moving into the handheld market for the first time, with a range of new DS releases this Q4. The firm told MCV it will follow its two pre-Christmas DS titles, with two further games slated for early 2009. The Berlin headquartered publisher had previously stuck to …

New stats from North American firm NPD and Deutsche Bank show that Nintendo’s Wii console has overturned the Xbox 360’s 12 month start on the marketplace to lead the installed hardware race by nearly two million units. GameDaily reports that the Wii has now sold 13.4 million units in North …