MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Hunger Games film company Lionsgate has announced that it will be opening a game division. This arm of the company will be headed up by Peter Levin, formerly of YouTube and podcasting network Nerdist Industries. He has also served as an executive advisor for Angry Birds firm Rovio. In his …
Read More »Marvel makes new quality pledge for video games output
Fewer games that are better and are only released when they’re ready – that’s the message coming from Marvel. Titles from recent partners such as Activision and Sega on consoles, as well as digital releases from Gameloft and Gazillion, have typically not fared well with critics. But with Marvel increasingly …
Read More »Sword Art and Theatrhythm send handheld sales soaring in Japan
Both 3DS and Vita saw decent upturns in unit sales last week thanks to two big new Top Ten releases, the latest Japanese sales data from Famitsu reveals. Bandai Namco’s new Vita title Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment debuted at No.1 in the Top Ten for the week ending April …
Read More »TIGA criticises PEGI ratings pricing
UK game industry trade body TIGA has criticised PEGI for its punitive” pricing policy for game ratings that it claims is hurting small studios. Currently developers have to pay a fee for a game content rating every time they release a title on a different console, even if the content …
Read More »THE DAILY MAIL FILES: Paper links Leeds teacher stabbing to Dark Souls
UK paper The Daily Mail has inevitably linked the tragic stabbing of a Leeds schoolteacher to video games. 61-year-old Spanish teacher Ann Maguire was yesterday killed in front of pupils yesterday by a still unnamed 15 year old male student. Police trawling social media accounts of schoolboy, 15, accused of …
Read More »Star Wars games are no longer canon
Any and all events ever depicted in every Star Wars game ever made is no longer to be considered canon. That’s the new directive coming from IP owner Disney, which has said that the films and TV series are now the only official entries in Star Wars fiction. This means …
Read More »Iwata: We shouldn’t think entertainment = only video games
Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has stressed that Nintendo should no longer be thought of as just a video games company. Reiterating the message sent out to investors in January, the under-fire exec has told Diamond, as reported by CVG, that Nintendo’s expansion into non-gaming markets and its new ‘Quality of …
Read More »Is virtual a reality?
Over the history of games there have been technology advancements that happened before their time. Sega’s Dreamcast and its online gaming, for instance. Or Nokia’s NGage and its efforts to marry the worlds of mobile phones and portable gaming. Great ideas that would eventually transform the games industry, but at …
Read More »GamePointsNow slams digital and physical price disparity
It’s cheaper to buy a boxed game with a digital code inside than to just buy the code, says online retailer GamePointsNow. The firm’s MD Simon Ward says publishers are charging retailers more for digital games than physical ones as it eliminates the cost of stock holding and removes the …
Read More »‘Britain can lead the world in games development’, says Osborne
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, praised the games industry at an event that marked the launch of the long-awaited tax breaks for video games development. The event was hosted by UKIE and the TV Coalition this morning, and featured the Chancellor as a key guest as he celebrated …
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