Facebook paid out $1.4 billion (£883.9 million) to app developers last year, according to the company's games product manager.
Speaking at GDC in San Francisco yesterday, Matt Wyndowe said the figure showed how serious Facebook was about its role as a gaming platform, with his team's regular meetings with Facebook's senior management further reinforcing the point.
THQ has been sued by sportswear company Adidas for breach of contract.
Oregon Live reports that THQ failed to follow through on an agreement to publish a game based on Adidas' MiCoach device. The deal was struck in December 2010 and the game, provisionally titled MiCoach 24/7, should have been released in January.
EA has temporarily pulled The Simpsons: Tapped Out from the Apple App Store while it works on connectivity issues.
In a statement passed to VG247, the publisher claims that the game, released last week, has proven so popular that its servers were unable to cope with demand.
Capcom says that at least half of its revenue and operating profit will come from digital sales within the next five years.
The claim comes from Christian Svensson, SVP of Capcom Entertainment, in an interview with Gamasutra at GDC in San Francisco in which he says the growth of digital distribution, and day-and-date retail and digital releases, means such a transition is inevitable.
CCP has dropped its initially planned "cover charge" for upcoming PS3 MMOFPS Dust 514, which will now be free to download and play.
It had intended to convert the $10-$20 price of the game to credits which could be spent on in-game microtransactions, and “probably will still have some kind of [starter] pack like that", although it will no longer be required to play the game.
UK retailer Game Group has seemingly lost the support of Capcom, confirming that it won’t be stocking Street Fighter X Tekken and Asura's Wrath when they launch this Friday.
Assassin's Creed III will be released for Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii U on October 31, publisher Ubisoft has confirmed.
The largest project in Ubisoft's 25-year history, Assassin's Creed III is set in 1777 as the American Revolutionary War rages across North America. The new protagonist, Ratohnaké:ton - yes, that's a colon - is of Native American and English descent but soon adopts the name Connor, passing from untamed frontier to colonial towns and rural battlefields.
Lionhead has announced Fable Heroes, a fourplayer hack-and-slasher for Xbox Live Arcade.
Revealed at Microsoft's Spring Showcase in San Francisco last week, Fable Heroes has been in development since early last year and is the product of Lionhead's annual Creative Day, which we featured back in E228.
Players cooperate and compete to earn coins, which level up their characters and can be used to unlock content in upcoming Kinect-powered 360 exclusive Fable: The Journey.
Members of the PlayStation Plus subscription service will be able to buy Journey a week before its official release.
A post on the PlayStation Blog confirms that Plus members will be able to download Thatgamecompany's striking adventure from Wednesday, March 7 - a full week before the game is officially released. Members will also be given a free download of a Journey dynamic theme.
To kick off his presentation of Fable: The Journey at Microsoft's Spring Showcase in San Francisco, Peter Molyneux said the following:
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor will be released for Xbox 360 on June 22, publisher Capcom has confirmed.
First announced by now-departed head of R&D Keiji Inafune in September 2010, Heavy Armor is in development at From Software, supports Kinect and is exclusive to Xbox 360.
PlayGround Games is developing the next instalment of Microsoft's racing series with founding developer Turn 10, with a release planned for autumn 2012.
Forza Horizon was revealed through a teaser trailer at Microsoft's Spring Showcase in San Francisco last week that emphasised an open road cutting through desert scrub and partying people, though no other details are yet clear to confirm rumours from last spring that it's to be an open-world racer.
343 Industries showed off the first footage of Halo 4 and revealed its creative strategy for the game at Microsoft's Spring Showcase in San Francisco last week.
Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson is to receive the Special Award at the BAFTA Videogame Awards later this month.
The Academy has chosen to honour Persson, 32, for his role in turning Minecraft into a phenomenon which has grossed some £62 million for his studio Mojang.
The board of directors at troubled retailer Game Group are reportedly considering closing the business to avoid insolvency.
The claim comes from UK paper The Daily Express, which cites a "source close to the situation" as saying the board doubts whether the company can survive the coming trading season and is considering cutting its losses now.
SSX is the new UK all-formats number one, EA's snowboarding reboot taking top spot in its first week on sale.
A game of getting from A to B in as few inputs as possible, Escape Plan puts Vita’s touch controls through their paces. The escapees in question are Lil and Laarg, held captive by blabbering antagonist Bakaku in his Burton-esque prison. Each room presents a different challenge – some simple, some sinister – but all are brought to life with noir brushstrokes.
As the silky house of Deep Dish’s The Future Of The Future kicks in on the opening stage (or skin) of Electronic Symphony, you quickly realise licensed music is Lumines’ secret sauce, the relative paucity of which has always held the series back from its true potential. It’s always been better when played as a music game, rather than a puzzler, and that’s clearer than ever thanks to an excellent soundtrack that’s been cherry-picked from 30 years of electronic music.
On the surface of it, Super Stardust Delta is all about the controls. Housemarque’s glitzy twin-stick shooter makes the most of Vita’s thumbsticks, its campaign mode manages to rope the motion sensors in for camera movement and an EMP bomb, and then goes on to use both touchscreens for special weapon deployment. What’s more, a series of well-meaning – if largely unexciting – minigames showcase everything from tilt-based steering to a kind of bi-touchscreen pinch that has you break open asteroids by squeezing the handheld from the front and back.
Apple's App Store has hosted its 25 billionth download.
The person who downloaded the 25 billionth app will be revealed within the next ten days, and will receive $10,000 in iTunes vouchers.
It's a remarkable figure, made all the more so by the store having only crossed the ten billion mark in January last year. Then, the lucky downloader was Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, with a download of Paper Glider.
Valve Corporation is working on a console of its own, according to reports, and could announce its move into the hardware market at GDC later this week.
Electronic Arts has posted details on how to obtain pre-ordered games if you've already put your money down at Game.
Following the credit dispute between Electronic Arts and Game Group, the publisher has provided details of where else its games will be available for customers who pre-ordered at Game or Gamestation.
Following the dismissal of a patent infringement lawsuit Nintendo of America's senior vice president of legal and general counsel, Rick Flamm, has stated the company "vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firnly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent", adding that Nintendo "refuse to succumb to patent trolls".
The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by IA Labs, accusing Nintendo of infringing patents with the tech behind various Wii hardware including Wii Fit, the balance board and Wii MotionPlus.
Cory Barlog, who's previously directed instalments in the God Of War series, has joined Crystal Dynamics to work on the in-development Tomb Raider reboot.
When that's out of the way, he'll be hard at work on an as-yet-unnanounced project.
Barlog's expertise with God Of War - feisty realtime action games that love a good button-prompt - would seem a good fit for Tomb Raider going by the snippets of gameplay footage publisher Square Enix has drip-fed so far.
Is a 100-hour videogame worthwhile? This is the question – a fair one – posed by journalist Michael Thomsen in a recent Slate article cataloguing the various resentments that piled up during his tour of fantasy-RPG epic Dark Souls.