Only a few finance staff remain as Viacom swings the axe following Harmonix sale in December.
MTV Games has been closed by owner Viacom, according to reports.
According to MCV, the London-based international office, run by former THQ executive Roy Campbell, closed its doors on Wednesday.
PS3 hacker’s legal team seek to overturn restraining order, arguing California court has no jurisdiction.
A lawyer acting on behalf of PS3 hacker George “Geohot” Hotz are seeking a dismissal of the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that a court granted last week.
John Schappert says more activity planned for 2011 as Facebook playerbase continues to rise.
Electronic Arts says that it will be a more active presence on Facebook in 2011.
Screenplay adapted from 1993 Konami classic being shopped round Hollywood.
A Hollywood movie based on Konami’s 1993 cult classic Zombies Ate My Neighbours is in the early stages of development.
Net income rises 117.3 per cent, with more than half of all sales revenue coming from pachislot division.
Sega Sammy has posted a good set of results for the third quarter of the fiscal year, with year on year profits more than doubling.
Net income for the nine months to December 31, 2010 was 36.8 billion yen. In the same period in 2009 the figure was 16.9 billion, meaning Sega Sammy has enjoyed a 117.3 per cent increase in profits year on year.
No surprises as Activision shooter tops Major Nelson’s list of most played online games of the year.
Activision’s multiplayer shooter Call Of Duty: Black Ops was the most played game on Xbox Live in 2010.
Xbox Live mouthpiece Major Nelson has posted the top ten most popular titles of the year on Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade and Indie Games over on his blog.
Survival horror sequel knocks LittleBigPlanet 2 off top spot in its first week on shelves.
Dead Space 2 is top of the Nordic chart in its first week on sale, knocking last week’s chart-topper LittleBigPlanet 2 back into second spot.
EA said this week that its survival horror sequel is currently outselling its predecessor at a rate of two to one, and that claim is borne out in the Nordic chart, which combines sales data from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Black Ops still ahead in this week's UK Top Sellers Buzz chart, but Angry Birds leads monthly Most Popular Games chart.
Despite LittleBigPlanet 2's chart-topping debut last week, and Dead Space 2's identical feat this week, Call Of Duty: Black Ops is still the title on most gamers' minds. Whil Visceral Games' space horror amassed 16,516 mentions, far in excess of third place LBP2's 6756, it was nearly 10,000 short of Activision's perennial talking point, which saw 25,996.
UKIE chair Andy Payne to lead group of eight mobile, social and traditional UK developers.
The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) has announced the formation of The Games Consortium, an organisation aimed at helping independent developers “exploit their games through digital distribution”.
Net income for the nine months to December 31 drops 77 per cent; figure for Q3 itself much, much worse.
Square Enix has posted a miserable set of accounts for the third quarter of the year on its website.
The firm has declined to release figures for the quarter itself, instead posting results for the nine months to December 31, 2010, which show profits dropping 77 per cent on 2009, to 1.8 billion yen. Net sales fell 28 per cent to 98.2 billion.
Entire software library now available through web portal; in-app purchasing coming this Spring.
Google has given the web version of its Android Market a thorough overhaul, bringing it more into line with Apple’s App Store.
The firm announced the move at yesterday’s unveiling of Android OS 3.0, dubbed Honeycomb, but the changes have gone live already.
Publisher turns a profit after losses last year, but Ninja Theory’s Enslaved sells just 460k worldwide.
Namco Bandai had a good third quarter of the fiscal year, posting a profit of 5.4 billion yen after suffering a loss of 5.7 billion in the same period in 2009.
Net sales rose slightly, up from 110 billion yen in 2009 to 114.4 billion. The firm has not revealed software sales for the quarter, instead posting combined figures for the nine months to December 31, 2010.
Following yesterday's feature on usability testing, we gather Codemasters executive producer, Adam Parsons; Bungie user research lead, John Hopson; and Black Rock Studios game director, Jason Avent, to find out their opinions on some of gaming's more irritating quirks.
UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENES
Sales of PlayStation 3 games increase 21 per cent year on year, but exchange rate fluctuations hit margins.
Sony’s gaming arm saw operating income more than double to 45.7 billion yen during the third quarter of the fiscal year.
Overall sales at Sony’s Networked Product and Services division decreased by 6.4 per cent year on year to 566.6 billion yen, but this can be mostly attributed to exchange rate fluctuations which have hit Japanese firms’ margins.
Mistwalker RPG straight in at the top in a great week for new releases; Monster Hunter drops to seventh.
The Last Story, the Wii RPG from Mistwalker and AQ Interactive, tops the Japanese chart in its first week on sale.
Selling almost 115,000 units, The Last Story is one of seven new entries in the top 10; indeed the entire top five are new releases and there are a further six in the top twenty.
Publisher outlook for fiscal 2012 sunny despite sales falling 12 per cent; uDraw, Smackdown perform well .
Publisher THQ suffered losses of $14.94 million in the three months ending December 31, 2010. Over the same period in 2009 it made a profit of $542,000.
Hacker says PS3 can never be fully re-secured due to “kindergarten mistakes” in system security.
Sony’s recently-released PlayStation 3 system software 3.56, which was solely intended to stop hackers and pirates in their tracks, only presents a “minor drawback” to the scene.
Trade body unimpressed by government-ordered Ofcom review of Digital Economy Act.
Trade body UKIE has expressed concern at the news that the UK government is to review the Digital Economy Act (DEA).
It was revealed yesterday that the government had asked communications regulator Ofcom to look again at sections 17 and 18 of the act, which would see websites that facilitate copyright infringement shut down.
Official Nintendo Magazine is offering gamers the chance to try Nintendo's hardware ahead of its release.
Fellow Future Publishing mag, Official Nintendo Magazine, is partnering with Nintendo and HMV to offer gamers an advance hands-on with Nintendo's 3DS. A selection of games will be available to play at both of the two planned events which take place in Glasgow and Bristol later this month over the weekend Saturday 12 and Sunday 13.
Chief operating officer John Schappert says mobile and IPTV markets are more important in the short term.
Publisher Electronic Arts has said that it is more interested in the mobile and IPTV markets than in developing games in 3D.
Net income rises to 6.83 billion yen over last nine months, driven largely by software sales.
Capcom has announced that its net income for the nine months ending December 31, 2010 rose by 294.8 per cent to 6.83 billion yen.
In its latest financial statements published on its website, the Japanese firm also revealed net sales climbed to 70.77 billion yen, an increase of 41.6% on the same period in 2009.
From unskippable cutscenes to galvanic skin response, we investigate the world of videogame user research.
Latest financial statement show revenue drops to $1.05bn year on year as publisher suffers $322m loss.
Electronic Arts suffered a 15 per cent drop in year on year revenue in the final three months of 2010.
In its financial statements for the third quarter of the fiscal year the publishing giant revealed net revenue had fallen to $1.05 billion from $1.24 billion over the same period in 2009. It also sustained a net loss of $322 million, a near-fourfold increase on 2009's $82m deficit.
Community manager Josh Olin says developers deterred from trying new things by “angry entitled fans.”
Treyarch community manager Josh Olin has said that the unpleasant tone of internet contrarians is the biggest problem facing the game industry today.
