MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
We already know that 2016 was not the best year ever for the UK games market. But there’s one category within gaming that still provides growth: merchandise. GAME said in its 2016 financial report that although sales declined in the year, licensed merchandise was up 70 per cent year-on-year. But …
Read More »Sony: Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy is the ‘PlayStation icon of the future’
Horizon Zero Dawn is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year, if not the most anticipated PS4-exclusive of 2017. Of course, it’s still early in the year and E3 could bring its own share of surprises, but so far the Guerrilla-developed title ranks very high on the …
Read More »Margin Makers: Guide to LEGO merchandise
2016 was another good year for Warner Bros and LEGO in the UK. Although the publisher’s software market share decreased compared to 2015 (from 9.9 per cent in units to 6.4 per cent in 2016), there were still four LEGO games in the year’s Top 50. LEGO Star Wars: The …
Read More »Horizon Zero Dawn, For Honor and Halo Wars 2 headline this week’s MCV
This week, we discuss the creation of a brand new Government organisation, the British Games Institute, as industry veterans Ian Livingstone and Rick Gibson make their case. But this week’s MCV is first and foremost about the big games releasing over the next couple of weeks. We talk to Sony’s …
Read More »Facebook to close 200 Oculus Rift demo stations in the US
200 Oculus Rift demo stations are to be closed at Best Buy stores in the US, according to the Business Insider. The website reports that Facebook ordered the closure of its VR corners due to store performance,” according to an internal memo. An anonymous Best Buy worker told BI that …
Read More »Castlevania Netflix series is coming later this year
Producer Adi Shankar, who previously worked on movies Dredd and Lone Survivor, has revealed he’s working on a Castlevania series for Netflix, which, according to him, will be the western world’s first good video game adaptation” (see original Facebook post below). The first season will launch this year, with season …
Read More »GTA V has shipped 75m copies since launch, selling more in 2016 than 2015
It’s now Take-Two’s turn to report on its quarterly financial results, and CEO Strauss Zelnick revealed during the earnings call that Grand Theft Auto V has shipped over 75m units since launch in September 2013. Rockstar’s title was the sixth best-selling game of 2016, he further said. Following this announcement, …
Read More »YouTuber NepentheZ pleads guilty to FIFA gambling accusations
FIFA YouTuber Craig ‘NepentheZ’ Douglas and business partner Dylan Rugby have pleaded guilty to charges of gambling they previously rejected, the BBC reported yesterday. After the BBC broke the news, Douglas took some time to explain the situation on Twitter (see below), saying he’ll upload a video in due course …
Read More »Samsung shipped more VR headsets than Vive, Oculus and PSVR combined in 2016
A new report published by SuperData revealed that the virtual reality industry made $1.8bn (1.44bn) in revenue in 2016, with 6.3m devices shipped throughout the course of the year. Of these units, 4.51m were Samsung Gear VR headsets, making it the most-shipped headset of 2016. Sony’s PlayStation VR came in …
Read More »Rocket League is getting the toys treatment
Cars-meet-football title Rocket League will be getting a line of car toys this spring, after developer Psyonix partnered with creator of licensed collectibles Zag Toys. The line will include 12 pull-back racer cars (see below), which will each come inside a miniature Rocket Ball. Some of these mini-cars will also …
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