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

Nielsen’s US Games 360 Report 2017 has found that non-gamers still remain largely unaware of some video games hardware. Among the general population, only 22 per cent of people have even heard of the Nintendo Switch and only 11 per cent the Xbox Scorpio. In contrast, 69 per cent of …

Develop’s editor Jem Alexander discusses the out-of-home VR market and how escape rooms are delving into digital. Escape rooms are exploding all over London. The rooms themselves aren’t literally exploding, of course, but I’ve noticed frankly ridiculous growth in the market in cities all over the world. It seems that …

There will be no more games in the Mass Effect series for the foreseeable future, it seems. Kotaku reports that the sci-fi RPG series has been put on hiatus and that its developer, BioWare Montreal, has been turned into a support studio. Indeed, the site adds that many of the …

Job Simualtor developer will still do multi-platform releases

Hearthstone’s Spring Championship Lan final will be taking place in Shanghai, with players competing for a chunk of a $250,000 prize pool. The event will take place from July 7-9 at the Shanghai Expo Center, with 16 players made up of the top four players from Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and …

Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality developer Owlchemy Labs is now owned by Google. Google is going big on VR following the release of its Daydream platform, and the studio’s early success with Job Simulator clearly made it a priority target. Owlchemy recently discussed the importance it placed …

Gfinity have announced that the Elite Draft — and attached Elite Series — will not take place until a later date. The Draft was due to be held on Friday but has now been delayed indefinitely. London-based Gfinity have claimed the Draft is delayed due to an extension of the …

No word on potential buyers, staff or the future of Hitman franchise

A shadow of uncertainty has been cast over Hitman developer Io Interactive this morning. Square Enix has just announced that it has put the studio up for sale. Io was acquired by Eidos in 2004, which in turn was acquired by Square Enix in 2009. Io’s most recent release was …

ESL have announced a deal with Emirates Airline, allowing passengers on any Emirates flight to watch on-demand esports content from ESL in-flight. The partnership is a big one for esports fans, the first of its kind to allow air passengers to watch esports matches on demand using an in-flight entertainment …