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

PSP has comfortably become the best-selling console in Japan for the first half of the year – shifting just shy of two million units in the region. According to data from MCV’s exclusive media partner Famistu/Enterbrain, Sony’s handheld was lagging behind DS Lite and Wii in January, but overtook both …

Margaret Hodge, the UK minister for culture, creative industries and tourism, has called on the BBFC and the games industry to sensibly address the issue over the future classification of video games in a ‘grown up way’. Senior industry executives and the Government are currently discussing how games should best …

But industry can help change authoritiesâ?? views, says culture minister Hodge

Channel 4 has begun to properly commission games content alongside its TV and cross-media efforts – and has turned to indie team Introversion for one of its first projects. The channel is also looking to fund games for the likes of Miniclip.com and Kongregate.com, plus console downloads, mobile games and …

EURO CHARTS: Super Smash Bros. rules supreme Nintendo fighting title takes top spot in Spain, Germany, Sweden Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl has taken the No.1 spot in the Spanish, German and Swedish software charts in its first week. According to Next-Gen.biz, The previous week’s bestseller in all three mainland …

Following last week’s kafuffle which saw PS3 firmware 2.40 released and then withdrawn following reports of system failures, an updated 2.41 version of the software has been made live on Sony’s PSN network. Speaking of the update on the official US PlayStation blog, PSN operations director Eric Lempel stated: As …

The BBFC has responded to earlier ELSPA claims that it was incapable of properly working with the games industry – and said it ultimately wants to pursue a partnership with rival pan-Europe classification body PEGI. Speaking at today’s Westminster Media Forum on the games industry, the BBFC’s head of policy …

Handset giant's developer arm teams with DeviceAnywhere to offer remote access to devices.

PEGI represents the gold standard” today, and will undoubtedly be the best system for tomorrow. PEGI is clearly the only ratings system which has the power to prevent game publishers distributing unsuitable content to children, online and offline. Only PEGI fully assesses all games content. It is designed specifically for …

David Yarnton, UK General Manager of Nintendo: The PEGI age ratings system is favoured by Nintendo. It has the ability to assess and rate all game content and does not rely on a sample of game play to form its decisions. The fact that there is also an EC proposal …