MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Cross-platform casual games company King.com has revealed some impressive numbers. The publisher now has some 70m active daily users (ADUs) and claims three of the top ten most played Facebook games – Candy Crush Saga (15.5m ADUs), Pet Rescue Saga (6m ADUs) and Farm Heroes Saga (4.8m ADUs). It hosts …
Read More »Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut smashes Rising Star’s pre-order records
Today’s release of Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut brings with it word of a very well deserved accomplishment for publisher Rising Star Games. The game, a PS3 re-release of Xbox 360’s cult 2010 horror release with additional content, has become Rising Star’s most pre-ordered game ever, MCV can reveal. In …
Read More »Tesco surprises city with blockbuster Christmas
The UK’s leading retailer Tesco has reported its strongest Christmas in the UK for three years. Like-for-like sales were up 1.8 per cent in the six weeks ending January 5th. Online food sales were the star, climbing 18 per cent. It’s a fantastic turnaround for the supermarket, having reported a …
Read More »App Store vitals: 40bn downloads, 500m active accounts
Apple’s App Store has hit 40 billion downloads, less than a year afterreaching 25bn downloads back in March.The announcement follows Flurry’s study that showed1.76bn Android and iOS apps were downloaded in the last week of 2012. Apple certainly had a bumper December as the App Store reached 2bn downloads during …
Read More »Overall UK games market down 17.4% in 2012
The ERA has said that the UK video games market declined 17.4 per cent to 1.598bn in 2012. Those numbers include both physical and digital sales. By contrast, music was down just 5.5 per cent and video 10 per cent. The overall entertainment market decline was 12 per cent, with …
Read More »World of Warcraft subscriber numbers bounce back
The subscription MMO is dead, is it? That’s what many would have you believe. But it appears that Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft isn’t sticking to the script. Subscriber numbers for the game have risen beyond the 10m mark once more, having dipped to 9.1m in the company’s last financial …
Read More »iPhone 5 registers 2m pre-orders in one day
Apple has stated that it received over two million pre-orders for the iPhone 5 in its first 24 hours of availability. That’s double the one million pre-orders won by the iPhone 4S in its first 24 hours and over triple the 600,000 day one iPhone 4 pre-orders. The handset is …
Read More »Gamescom celebrates trade success, announces 2013 dates
The organisers of Gamescom 2012 have hailed the event’s success, while confirming the date for next year’s European expo. Gamescom 2013 will take place between 21st and 25th of August. Last week’s show was attended by over 275,000 visitors. Although this was the same as in 2011, the number of …
Read More »UPDATED: 1,600 users – the story of OnLive’s collapse starts to emerge
The truth about OnLive’s demise will take time to emerge – but already a solid picture is being formed. And at the heart of it are user numbers. OnLive has never given out detailed user numbers, beyond vague statement of phenomenal interest” and growing user bases”. But if the numbers …
Read More »UPDATED: 3DS XL registers decent launch sales in UK and Japan
The launch of the 3DS XL is pivotal to the future fortunes of the Nintendo 3DS and early sales numbers for the handheld are encouraging. Although Nintendo has not released concrete sales numbers for the UK, Games Industry reports that the machine sold a little shy of five figures” (as …
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