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

As it announces a number of new developer initiatives, Microsoft has made a bold - and perhaps questionable - claim, saying that three-quaters of games in development are being devised first for its platforms using its XNA tool.

GarageGames, the company behind the Torque games engine, has opened a new social networking site for indie games developers and players at GreatGamesExperiment.com.

Just a week after announcing his community-driven MMO, former Shiny boss Dave Perry has taken the wraps off another community-oriented project, this time asking games professionals to collaborate on a map of their industry.

As GDC 07 kicks off, Microsoft has officially incresed the size of files available over Xbox Live Arcade, up from 50 to 150 megabytes.

The Nordic Game Program has doubled its government support grant for 2007, with 5m Danish crows (DKK), or €670,000 (£454,000) available for games companies in the countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

On Monday, the Game Developers Conference kicks off in San Francisco. Develop will be there offering live coverage and email flashes of the biggest announcements. In the meantime, we've put together a list of what our editorial team thinks are the 20 most important and/or intriguing sessions…

Development on Warner Bros' next-gen Dirty Harry game has been moved from Foundation 9's The Collective meaning a number of staff are now without work at the South California studio.

Rumour reports on the web claim to spill the beans on part of Sony’s GDC announcements – five days before the format-holders’ keynote in San Francisco – saying that the PS3’s online offer will be updated into a MySpace/Second Life style hybrid called ‘PlayStation Home’.

LucasArts is working on a handheld game based on its new Clone Wars CG TV show, and its sister production studio at Lucasfilm Singapore has been expanded to handle the development.

Funcom plans to turn its Dreamfall series of games into an online-only episodic franchise and has secured a grant from the Norwegian Film Fund to support the project's R&D.