The European Commission has announced it will be launching an investigation into the bilateral agreements concluded between Valve and five PC game publishers over a suspected breach in EU antitrust rules. The Commission says it wants to investigate whether these companies are preventing consumers from purchasing digital content due to …

The ZeniMax vs Oculus trial is coming to an end as the jury awarded ZeniMax $500m (around 394m) after they found Oculus violated a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). ZeniMax initially asked for $4bn ($2bn in compensation and $2bn in damages) but the jury decided against it as Oculus was found not …

Activision Blizzard has announced the creation of a brand new Consumer Products division, and that it has hired Mattel and Disney vet Tim Kilpin to head it up. In this new role,Kilpin will be tasked with working on new products to expand and deepen audience engagement” with the firm’s brands …

We already knew EA had a great 2016, once again appearing at the top of the publisher charts for UK retail sales (source: GfK). Today’s Q3 earnings call reinforced that position with some choice stats concerning the growth of its playerbase for key titles. FIFA 17 was the top-selling console …

Microsoft has announced two new Xbox One controller designs. The Ocean Shadow Special Edition and the Winter Forces Special Edition will come to retailers worldwide next month, and will retail at 59.99 each. The Winter Forces Special Edition is launching on February 16th and has a light and dark grey …

EA’s digital unit sales are tracking ahead of the publisher’s own expectations. That’s according to an investor call with the publisher last night, in which CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed that that 32 per cent of its unit sales were digital. The exec said that is just on PlayStation 4 and …

Despite the narrative of digital sales becoming a bigger part of today’s games market, 80 per cent of new releases are bought in a box.   This is a sector within which publisher Sold Out has built its business, and it’s done it rather successfully, too. The current version of …

First title is a VR anthology series with co-op

At E3 2015, IO and Square Enix revealed a new entry in its Hitman series.  Simply called Hitman, this was a departure for the franchise, being released in an episodic fashion. Square had seen success with this model the year before with Dontnod’s episodic surprise smash hit, Life is Strange. …

Skate 3’s highly-awaited sequel might finally happen – or at least that’s what we can interpret from a single random tweet. Senior manager at EA’s community engagement team Daniel Lingen simply tweeted #skate4” (see below) on Friday and everyone lost it. At the time of writing, this single tweet has …