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

New game from Radical uses Neural-THX 7.1 Surround Sound

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 …