MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Following news yesterday that GAME has already sold out of its initial Kinect stock allocation and cannot guarantee day one delivery for new pre-orders, two other major UK retailers have stopped taking pre-orders for the device. Amazon.co.uk is asking interested customers to sign up for email notifications regarding availability. An …
Read More »Move off to a good start
Sony has not released any sales data for the recently launched PlayStation Move, but one analyst reckons that everything’s got off to a good start on the far side of the pond. A new survey from US analyst Lazard Capital Markets has suggested that consumer hunger for both Sony’s Move …
Read More »Zynga’s scope, size and power
Speaking at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference today, Zynga’s CTO Cadir Lee has revealed a number of stats and details which show what an impressive infrastructure and vast operation it runs. The numbers include:* 10 PER CENT of the world’s internet population has played a Zynga game* 215 MLLION monthly users* Zynga’s …
Read More »Modern Warfare 2 still rules Xbox Live
The long awaited release of Halo Reach last week was the biggest games event of 2010 – but 2009’s gaming champ isn’t much impressed. According to figures from Microsoft’s Larry Hyrb, Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the most played game on Xbox Live for the week ending …
Read More »Microsoft cheers Sky Player success
With plenty of noise being made about the rampant success of the BBC iPlayer on the PS3 and Wii, Microsoft has taken time to point out that its own IPTV offering is also performing very strongly. Last October the platform holder launched its console-adapted version of the Sky Player, which …
Read More »Fewer people playing Facebook games
Facebook has lost a substantial amount of its game users since altering its notification system, with FarmVille alone recording a dip of 4.4 million players. Gamasutra first reported the story, noting that 18 of the top 25 Facebook games lost players in April – with 12 of those games losing …
Read More »EA takes March crown monthly charts in full
The value of the UK games software market fell in March by seven per cent year-on-year. But it was still a great month of major releases, while EA and Square Enix both saw big gains. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was the runaway success story of the month with most copies …
Read More »CVG posts record audience growth
Over 2m gamers visited Future’s CVG.co.uk last month, a year-on-year rise of 68 per cent. Future said 2,265,823 people visited the consumer website last month, while UK unique users rose 26 per cent to 639,424. The results take in the entire CVG network, which also includes the Official Xbox Magazine …
Read More »Piracy accounts for dropping DS sales
Measuring the true scale of the impact of software piracy is a tough task, but Nintendo has said that illicit copying of DS titles is to blame for a near 50 per cent drop in DS games sales in Europe over recent months. Asahi.com quotes the platform holder as stating …
Read More »Home is a sticky experience
Despite widespread scepticism concerning Sony’s virtual world Home, the service continues to track record user levels and is making a profit for the platform holder, PSN boss Peter Dille has confirmed. We had the highest traffic in December since we launched with 10m users worldwide,” the exec told IGN. The …
Read More »