MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
A failure to keep pace with changes to the international games market has hit the Japanese games industry hardest. That’s according to a new report on the Japanese industry in weekly trade magazine Famitsu, as translated by Polygon. "This quarter featured tough earnings reports for companies overall," SMBC Nikko Securities …
Read More »Microsoft: Console still accounts for 42% of the total video games market
With Microsoft and Sony about the throw millions and millions of pounds at launching their next-gen consoles, some observers may quite rightly ask one question – why? After all, mobile and casual games are the new frontier, right? Folk don’t want to spend 50 on triple-A games, let alone anything …
Read More »Analyst: Mobile to be gaming’s primary platform by 2016
Mobile devices will become the gaming industry’s dominant platform in the next three years, according to analysis firm Juniper Research. Juniper predicts consumers worldwide will spend $3.03bn on mobile games in 2016. The company highlights tablets as the driving force, stating that they’re taking over where dedicated hardware would normally …
Read More »US games market falls 10% in March
Hit releases such as BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider were sadly unable to stop another month of annual decline in the US video games market. Total video games industry sales declined ten per cent year-on-year to $1.9bn, Gamasutra reports. That is of course an improvement on February’s 25 per cent …
Read More »The Japanese video games market actually GREW in the last 12 months
The Japanese video games market grew by 1.2 per cent year-on-year for the 12 months ending March 31st. No, that is not a typo. It’s the first annual growth the Japanese industry has reported in five years. Tech In Asia reports that the region’s games market hit $4.6bn in the …
Read More »EA: Ignore the vocal minority – the market likes free-to-play
The angry whining of teens on the internet should not be mistaken for actual, real-world opinion. That much is certainly true. Whether it can be applied to arguments surrounding free-to-play gaming is probably slightly more debatable. There’s no confusion as to which side of the fence EA sits on, however. …
Read More »Jade Raymond: Market can only support 10 successful triple-A games a year
The popularity of emerging business models and free-to-play has significantly reduced the scope for full-price triple-A success in the modern games market. That’s the opinion of Ubisoft’s Toronto Studio boss Jade Raymond, who believes that while the sector has reduced in size there is still scope for success in more …
Read More »EA on the fence about pre-owned; Next-gen not backwards compatible; Market will never be 100% digital
Publisher EA has admitted that it would in some ways like to see an end to pre-owned games, but has also admitted that the market could suffer were they to vanish. That’s according to chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen, who Gamasutra reports told an audience at the Goldman Sachs Technology …
Read More »OPINION: Niche opportunities in the games market
With the way so much stuff is shrinking in the UK games market – the number of big releases is falling, the amount you need to sell to get the boxed game to No.1 is tiny – you’d be forgiven for thinking that the specialist press world around games was …
Read More »US video games market slips 9% in 2012
The total value of the US video games market declined nine per cent in 2012. NPD estimates that the overall the sector was worth $14.8bn, down from $16.34bn in 2011. The number includes sales of physical and digital games (the latter presumably with a bit of guesswork) as well as …
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