MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Digital game sales worldwide generated $6.7bn in revenue in November 2016, an increase of 13 per cent year-on-year, according to a new report from SuperData Research. Mobile, premium, PC, console and free-to-play MMOs all experienced year-year-on-year growth in November, but console games were the biggest winner, gaining 35 per cent …
Read More »GAME’s Gibbs on its new Belong arena stores and the retailer’s future
Since its escape from financial trouble and subsequent relaunch in 2012, GAME has been putting a lot of effort into evolving its business. This became very apparent when the High Street retailer forked out 20m for eSports and events firm Multiplay. But the launch of its brand new arena stores …
Read More »NES Classic sold 196k in US in November but US market falls sharply
The hard to find NES Classic Mini shifted just shy of 200k units in its first month in the US, NPD data has shown. Note that this number would undoubtedly have been far higher had Nintendo been able to meet demand. The overall market was not a pretty picture, however. …
Read More »GAME announces charity partnership with SpecialEffect
High Street retailer GAME is teaming up with games industry charity SpecialEffect in the UK. GAME announced that its UK stores will be partnering with the organisation following a company-wide survey of its staff to see which charity they wanted to support. As a part of this, GAME will be …
Read More »China forces developers to reveal loot box odds
Starting May 2017 developers whose games contain random loot box drops will be required to reveal the underlying odds. Games such as Overwatch, Hearthstone and Counter-Strike reward players who both complete in-game tasks and pay cash with digital loot boxes, the contents of which vary. Rare and valuable items can …
Read More »GAME to open central London location
It appears that High Street retailer GAME is set to open one of its new arena locations in central London. That’s going by a post made by SVP of eSports and competitive gaming strategy Craig Fletcher on Twitter (below) which shows a store under construction with the address ‘162-170 Wardour …
Read More »Amazon boasts of record Black Friday sales for its Fire and Echo devices
The own-brand devices of the internet’s largest retailer had a bumper Black Friday weekend. Amazon has said that sales of the Amazon Fire TV were two and a half times larger than they were last year, helped in part no doubt by the big discounts. The device is still the …
Read More »SD cards will soon come with an app performance rating
Buyers of SD cards will soon be able to more accurately assess whether their purchase will be able to run applications as smoothly as if they were installed on integrated memory. With many portable devices designed to have their storage bolstered by external cards, it’s easy to forget that the …
Read More »Koch Media on its Superindie distribution label and the state of the indie retail sector
Only 4.7 per cent of UK physical sales of games are generated through indie retailers, according to Kantar Worldpanel’s annual survey. Competing with High Street giants such as GAME and online behemoths like Amazon: that’s the daily struggle of indie retailers. Which is why distributor Koch Media decided to launch …
Read More »1.9m games were sold during Black Friday week
The numbers are in for what looks to have been a massive Black Friday week. 1,936,636 games were sold for the week ending November 26th, according to GfK figures. That’s a nine per cent increase on last year’s 1,778,851 games. Meanwhile, 58.4m was generated in revenue for the sales period, …
Read More »