MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Everyone thought Play.com or Amazon would do it first. Even The Hut Group talked about it last year. But it’s emerging online retailer Bee.com that has taken the bold step onto the High Street. The website launched a shop in the Manchester Arndale Centre last weekend. The new outlet is …
Read More »OnLive connects to retail this year
OnLive hopes to be selling its game system in UK stores when the service is launched this autumn – and insists the High Street shouldn’t see cloud gaming as evil incarnate”. The OnLive game system consists of a micro console TV adaptor and a wireless controller. It enables users to …
Read More »Bricks and mortar to lead the way in digital
Everyone’s talking about Steam, the App Store and Xbox Live, but one European publishing boss is convinced that physical retail will ‘win the war for digital’. Namco Bandai’s European VP Olivier Comte says shops have an advantage as they are the experts in talking to consumers. His comments follow recent …
Read More »OPINION: PSN breach is bad for digital but good for High Street
For all the headlines in recent years about digital destroying traditional retail, the recent PSN crisis sees us return to reality. It has always been a gamble for consumers giving over credit card details and personal information to third parties – be they online retailers or digital platform holders. But …
Read More »UK retail suffers worst March sales fall
March saw the worst decline in sales since 1996 across the High Street. Figures from the British Retail Consortium show that last month’s total sales were down by 1.9 per cent compared to last year, according to the BBC. Like-for-like sales were down by 3.5 per cent – their worst …
Read More »High Street retail sales dip 0.4%
UK High Street retail sales stumbled 0.4 per cent in February in terms of value, the British Retail Consortium has announced. However total units sold increased 1.1 per cent year-on-year – compared to a 4.5 per cent rise seen in February 2010. This is the smallest gain since May 2009. …
Read More »Sony wants to sell PSN games in shops
SCEE President Andrew House wants to sell PSN games on the High Street. Microsoft is already active in this space: GAME started selling XBLA titles in-store two weeks ago. We actually already have the same programme in place with GameStop in the US,” he told MCV. We would like to work …
Read More »Physical games market will not recover
The market boom that enveloped the video games market in 2008 will never again be recaptured, analyst Screen Digest has warned. A gradual eradication of RRP, the disruption of the console hardware cycle and the rise of digital means that the High Street has only decline to come, analyst Ben …
Read More »Halo gives High Street reason to cheer
The blockbuster arrival of the latest Halo put the UK games market back on track. The 360 exclusive helped retailers make over 28m in sales. It was the best week for games retail all year, and a far cry from the week prior, when the UK market value plummeted to …
Read More »Specialists losing ground to supermarkets
Specialists may have driven the Halo: Reach launch excitement, but new research shows they are still losing ground to supermarkets. According to GfK Chart-Track, mass market grocers sold 29 per cent of all video games purchased during the first 34 weeks of the year. That’s an eight per cent rise …
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