Game industry business news

Japanese market authroity Enterbrain has confirmed to MCV that PSP led hardware sales in the territory during April. Sony’s handheld sold a whopping 380, 697 units in the month, over double that of its nearest competitor, Nintendo Wii, which sold 187, 121. In third place was DS Lite with 169,911 …

After launching in the US yesterday, Nintendo has announced that eight WiiWare titles will become available to European consumers when the online service arrives in the territory next week. The service launched this week in the US with six games – and back in Japan in March with nine. It …

PlayStation 3 becomes first console to use video format, which promises high quality compression

Bill Gates announced last week that Microsoft – which he founded and is chairman of – will invest some $147m on growing its business in South Korea. And some of the money will be spent on building a games development studio there, he added. AFP reports that Gates pledged to …

Independent retailers across the UK are finding refuge online, in order to offset pressure from supermarket price cutting, digital downloads and piracy. Alongside an increased online presence, many independents are focusing on their customer service, their range of retro software and console repair services, allowing them to grow in the …

GAMESCom organisers insist that the German games fair fits in with the trade’s preparations for Christmas, despite criticism over its timing. Earlier in the year the German trade association Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware (BIU) and Cologne’s trade fair business Koelnmesse announced that GAMESCom will kick off in September 2009, which drew …

Two thirds of women with access to the internet play casual games, according to a new survey – however, despite the financial potential this emerging sector remains largely untapped. While 70 per cent of women who are aged between 16 and 45 and live in households connected to the internet …

North American retailer GameStop has revealed to Newsweek’s Level Up blog that 64 per cent of its first-week GTA IV allocation was sold on Xbox 360. However, in a phone conversation with Newsweek, PlayStation’s senior vice president of Marketing Peter Dille has claimed that the PS3 consumer is ‘overindexing’ on …

Activision has announced that a new iteration of its classic Pifall franchise will be released on Wii in the autumn. Pitfall: The Big Adventure is in development at Activision studio Edge of Reality. Pitfall is one of the most legendary franchises in the history of videogames, so we look forward …

A recent report by New York’s Centre for an Urban Future has said the core games industry is badly represented in the Big Apple – but adds that the city it is one of the leading clusters in North America when it comes to casual games. The report, called Getting …