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

MCV media partner Enterbrain has released full year Japanese market figures for 2007 – showing a 25 per cent year-on-year leap in the hardware market, while overall software sales have dropped by one per cent compared to 2006. Japan’s total hardware and software market amounted to a whopping 687.66 billion …

IGN claims that Rockstar’s next-gen re-working of its once controversial free-roaming school-based romp Bully: Scholarship Edition will be released on Xbox 360 and Wii on March 7th in Europe. This new edition will include the original game in its entirety along with a host of extras including eight new missions, …

Another publishing superstar has climbed aboard the Steam bandwagon with news that Rockstar is to offer its PC catalogue on Valve’s ever-growing downloads service. Ten games are available to buy online now – GTA, GTA2, GTA3, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, Midnight Club II, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, …

The People reports that Prince William is struggling to find time to play the Wii he received for Christmas recently – as his grandmother, who is the Queen incidentally, is apparently hooked” on the machine. The paper quotes a Sandringham source as saying: "When she saw William playing a game …

Following the news that Warner is to cease production of HD-DVD movies and instead exclusively support Sony’s rival Blu-Ray format, last night’s CES 2008 North American HD-DVD Promotion Group conference was cancelled. A statement from the body read: "Based on the timing of the Warner Home Video announcement today, we …

In a massive blow to Toshiba’s HD-DVD hi-def disc format, content giant Warner Bros has announced that it is to release future HD movie content exclusively on Sony’s Blu-Ray format, with production of Toshiba’s HD-DVD discs to cease by May. Warner chairman and CEO Barry Meyer said of the decision: …

Classic brands and well-known casual games dominate

Microsoft’s Bill Gates used his last ever speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show to announce film behemoth MGM and TV network ABC-Disney had signed up to new content deals with his firm’s Xbox division. The technology magnate was joined on stage by Microsoft’s president of its entertainment and devices …

As part of its plan to expand the scope of the PSP as a wider entertainment system, SCE has announced that the Slim version of the handheld will be fitted with Skype capabilities, reported Next Generation . The free voice-over-IP service will be available on the console via a software …

Xbox Live users that subscribe to BT Broadband will soon be granted access to an extensive library of on-demand content including movies, TV, music videos and even BT Vision’s ‘near live’ FA Premier League football matches through their consoles. The new deal marks the coming together of two corporate giants …