MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
New German games expo Gamescom welcomed 240,000 visitors through its doors last week, with its success leading to organisers Koelnmesse to hail it as the world’s largest games trade event. In total 458 companies exhibited at the show, representing 31 different countries. This, according to Koelnmesse, makes Gamescom the world’s …
Read More »NPD: Has digital stolen retails missing sales?
The notion that games are recession proof is now well and truly forgotten – but perhaps the rise of both digital downloads and free-to-play online gaming is as big a culprit as global banking greed. NPD figures show that the North American video game market declined by 31 per cent …
Read More »NPD: Prototype keeps Nintendo from the top
Over-the-top free roaming action title Prototype topped the June software charts in the US, with the 419,900 sales enjoyed by the Xbox 360 SKU bettering both high-profile new arrivals and perennial sellers. The PS3 SKU shifted around 181,100 units. Much like the wider games market in North America, there were …
Read More »NPD: DS dominates hardware market
Amidst the gloom of yet more annual falls in the US video games market, hardware sales for June were better than expected hitting $1.7m – NPD had expected that number to be around $1.55m. As always, Nintendo’s machines were the star performers with DS shifting 766,500 units and the Wii …
Read More »NPD: US market suffers further decline
Gaming’s recession-proof credentials took a further knock overnight with news that the North American video games market suffered its fourth successive month of decline in June, falling 31 per cent to $1.17bn. It’s the worst year-on-year fall since September 2000, a month that saw annual declines of 41 per cent. …
Read More »Battlefield celebrates twin success
EA’s Battlefield brand has notched up two notable achievement overnight marking a notable victory for both free-to-play gaming and digital only releases. First off, online free-to-play cel-shaded PC title Battlefield Heroes has welcomed its one millionth player less than a month after it was first released. The team is really …
Read More »Greenberg: 360 pulling away from PS3 in Europe
Microsoft’s group product manager for Xbox 360 Aaron Greenberg has stated that Xbox 360 and PS3 were neck and neck” in sales terms until Microsoft’s aggressive European hardware price cutting lead to a significant sales increase in the region. While we had a pretty large lead – around five million …
Read More »High Street sales reach unprecedented pre-Xmas levels
New research from PricewaterhouseCoopers show that 82 per cent of UK High Street retailers are now offering significant sales or reductions in an effort to get shoppers spending money in the run-up to Christmas. Retail Bulletin reports that just 52 per cent of stores were running sales promotions one month …
Read More »WoW userbase still growing
The recent success of titles such as Eidos’ Age of Conan and Codemasters’ Lord of the Rings Online had lead some to speculate that long-term market leader World of Warcraft is on the wane – not so, according to its developer. Speaking to VG247 at Games Convention, Blizzard’s lead designer …
Read More »Play.com Live proves amazing success
Play.com Live kicked off at Wembley last weekend to snaking queues, smiling faces and some stunning new games. Highlights included a talk from the Far Cry 2 developers, live performances from the likes of Elliot Minor and a giant, inflatable Stay Puft. For our first show it was an amazing …
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