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

You only have to look at the headlines streaming through MCV in recent months to know why this is being described as the games industry’s age of consolidation. If it’s not 92 per cent of Activision’s shareholders voting for a merger with Vivendi, it’s the gripping – and titillating – …

Rumour has it that Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the SNES-CD. However, on closer inspection former Nintendo Chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi decided the contract was unacceptable and secretly cancelled all plans. Sony decided to use what they had developed so far and make a standalone console …

On April 1, 2003, one of the two biggest video game publishers in Japan, Enix, legally absorbed the other, Square. The latter’s stockholders received 0.85 shares of stock in the new company compared to Enix stockholders receiving a one-to-one trade. Despite this, many top officials within Square assumed leadership roles …

The 74 million acquisition of the second biggest specialist retailer in the UK by the biggest was a mighty shock for the entire British industry – not least the MCV team, who had to deal with the breaking news on our magazine’s deadline day. The total investment included 300,000 set …

Blizzard had been shunted around the industry like a pinball before being picked up by CUC International in 1996. However, two years later, more turmoil: revelations of dodgy dealings meant CUC (now Cendant) lost 80 per cent of its stock value. Canny Vivendi’s media subsidiary Havas wasted no time at …

The coupling of the world’s biggest publisher with Peter Molenyeux and Les Edgar’s lovechild led to some of EA’s most successful PC games, not least Syndicate Wars, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? In 2000, Electronic Arts merged its EA-UK offices with the Bullfrog offices in Chertsey. By …

The closest the video games industry has ever come to a real David-and-Goliath humdinger, Jane Cavanagh’s Britsoft baby SCi amazingly beat out the might of U2 loudmouth Bono’s cash when it bought fellow UK firm Eidos. Elevation Partners, run on Bono’s money and headed up by success-hungry John Riccitiello, had …

Seeing as previous Grand Theft Auto instalments have nearly all arrived on PC in the end, it isn’t surprising that talk of GTAIV hitting the format has been bounding about for ages – but now the biggest hint yet the game is on the way has hit the internet. For …

Warwickshire, UK-based Rare was one of the most successful developers of the 1990s, becoming synonymous with Nintendo for hits such as Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Kazooie and GoldenEye. However, at Microsoft’s XO event – bizarrely, at Pierre Cardin’s house in Cannes – it was gleefully announced that Rare founders the Stamper …

Ex-Infogrames boss Bruno Bonnell’s one-man mission to buy every company worth owning in games is as impressive as it is tragic. It all started back in 1996, when the firm snapped up Ocean Software in a shock move for approximately $100 million. Philips Media BV followed in 1997. In 1998, …