News archive

Blizzard shifted 3.5 million copies on the day of release. The feat was achieved despite server problems meaning that many people couldn't actually play it. More >

Japanese mobile gaming company Gree and Moshi Monsters developer Mind Candy have inked a deal that will see two new games in the series come to Gree's platform. The mobile games are set for release in the fourth quarter of 2012, with both companies hoping to benefit from each other's vast userbases - Gree currently has 230 million worldwide users, while Moshi Monsters has 60 million registered players. More >

Sony Online Entertainment has unveiled new free-to-play shooter, Bullet Run. The firstperson team battler is heading to PC this summer and is set in the near future with players competing in a Running Man-style reality TV show. More >

Take-Two has reported a loss of $107.7 million for the prior fiscal year in its full year results for the period ended March 31. Net revenue amounted to $825.8 million (down from $1.14 billion year-on-year), and the aforementioned loss compared to $53.8 million profit in the prior fiscal year driven predominantly by Red Dead Redemption's success. More >

The International Trade Commission's Judge David Shaw has recommended an import ban on the Xbox 360 in the US in the ongoing legal battle between Microsoft and Motorola. The import ban would affect the 4GB and 250GB models, and see a cessation to console shipments along with a block on sales of all unsold stock. There's already a precedent for such a ban, as Motorola was granted an injunction that blocked distribution of Microsoft's console in Germany earlier this month. More >

Sony is offering the opportunity to fly to E3 in LA next month with the team behind weekly HD PS3 video show Access TV. All you need to do is make a response video to the one below explaining, in a minute or less, why you should be the face of Access TV at the event. More >

YoYo Games has today launched the latest version of its 2D videogame creation software, GameMaker: Studio. Like previous versions, the development environment features a drag-and-drop interface that enables users to create games without having to code - though a built-in scripting language (GML) is available once you get more confident. More >

"We don't believe in cloning apps," says Whale Trail maker amid widespread anger at apparent cloning of indie party game. More >

Technology company Leap Motion has launched what it claims to be the world's most accurate motion control device. The company says its Leap is 200 times more accurate than anything else on the market "at any price point" and isn't just "a game system that roughly maps your hand movements". More >

Struggling Kingdoms Of Amalur developer 38 Studios has confirmed that it has had to make a number of job cuts as a result of its current financial crisis. Last week, the studio failed to pay its employees and a $1.125 million instalment on a $75 million Rhode Island state-backed loan. If the company defaults on the loan, it's feared that Rhode Island tax payers could foot the $112 million bill. More >

Microsoft has changed its Xbox Live Indie Games terms to allow developers to adjust the price of their games every seven days. Previously, XBLIG developers could only make changes to the price of their releases every 90 days. The new terms will take affect from May 23. More >

Capcom has confirmed that Ninja Theory's Devil May Cry reboot, DMC, won't be released until next year. The game is now scheduled for a January 15, 2013, launch in the US with a PC version set to arrive later in the year. More >

Team 17 co-founder Martyn Brown has been appointed by Activision to help the publisher establish a new mobile development studio in the north of England. More >

In a post on the studio's community website, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford says that the delay has come from the studio's insistence that quality will not be compromised by deadlines, adding that, by the time it comes out, Colonial Marines will have been in development for roughly the same amount of time as Borderlands and the original Brothers in Arms. More >

In a post on the studio's website Ulf Andersson, game director on multiplayer FPS Payday: The Heist, writes: "We are excited to be able to confirm that an in-depth collaboration between Overkill and Valve is currently in production." More >

The move is a clear attempt by EA to capitalise on the ever-increasing number of videogame projects funded by crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter by waiving its fees. While EA's revenue-sharing policy has never been disclosed, the industry standard is a 30 per cent cut for the platform holder. More >

Rockstar Games' Max Payne 3 is the new number one in the UK all-formats chart, beating sales of 2003 predecessor Max Payne 2 by almost ten copies to one. More >

The Evolution Of Combat project aims to transform the game’s combat system to “revolutionise the way players fight and interact in-game”. Specifics remain shrouded in secrecy, with Jagex promising more news in due course. More >

The first instalment in Telltale Game's episodic The Walking Dead adventure series has sold over one million copies in its first two weeks on sale. That figure represents combined sales across PC, Mac, PSN and XBLA and makes The Walking Dead: Episode One - A New Day Telltale's fastest selling game to date. More >

Epic Games has confirmed that it will demo its next-generation Unreal Engine 4, the first images from which were revealed yesterday, to developers at next month's E3. More >

Japan's consumer affairs agency has declared the controversial complete gacha randomised item mechanic illegal, confirming developer expectations. The gacha system acts like a slot or capsule toy machine, with players paying a nominal fee for a chance to unlock items. The complete, or "kompu", gacha mechanism locks away a highly rare item until other items have been unlocked. More >

Beleaguered Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning developer 38 Studios has been unable to make a $1.125 million loan repayment due to lack of funds. The studio, which elected to attempt to pay the loan rather than its 379 employees, has subsequently made its temps and contract employees redundant. More >

Sony has launched a new service that allows users to pre-purchase, download and install games ahead of their release date. More >

Indie developer Jeff Vogel has criticised Blizzard's insistence on maintaining a constant internet connection in order to play the game, saying it's "bad for PC/Mac gaming". Vogel's comments come in light of Diablo III's disastrous launch yesterday, in which server problems prevented anybody from playing it - even in single player. More >

UK-based developer Lionhead is working on an "MMO-like mulitplayer experience" for the next generation Xbox. The confirmation comes from a job ad posted on Linkedin by the Microsoft-owned studio, which also says that the game won't be based in the Fable universe. More >

French publisher Ubisoft has reported a profit of €37.3 million (£29.7 million) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012. Gross sales income came in at €1.06 billion (£845 million), a 1.9 per cent increase on the prior year's $1.04 billion (£828 million). Its current operating income shot from €29.4 million (£23.5 million) to €56 million (£44.8 million). More >

Touch Arcade reports that the app creator, known only as Blalock, has not been ordered by Apple to remove his work from the App Store because "ZeniMax didn't specify what the app is specifically violating." More >

Andriasang reports that the latest issue of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu lists Cave's two Vita projects as cancelled. Announced at last year's Tokyo game show but never seen in the flesh, one was a shooter, the other a social game. More >

Players who trade items with a Templar early in the game are met with Error 3006, which boots them out of Battle.net and leaves them unable to log back in. A post from Takralus, a member of Blizzard's community team, confirms that a fix is in the works. More >

WPRI reports that governor Lincoln Chafee's principal cause for concern is a $75 million loan guarantee, backed by Rhode Island taxpayers, granted in 2010. The studio, set up by retired baseball professional Curt Schilling, had taken $49.8 million of that by the end of March, with $23.4 million invested and the remainder covering the costs of setting up set investments. More >

To tide you over, our friends at PC Gamer are reviewing the game as it happens. Tom Francis' Diablo III review is a work in progress, updated after every hour of play - and yes, he's had the odd lag spike and a few random dropouts, just like the rest of you. More >

The event, which runs on July 11, the day before the returning Indie Dev Day, features talks from the likes of Jagex, Fantastec and games consultant Brian Baglow. A panel, Marketing - Explore The Dirty Indie Secret, will be chaired by IndieCity's Scott MacKintosh and feature Mode 7's Paul Taylor, indie developer Mike Bithell, and Dan Marshall of BAFTA-winning Size Five Games. More >

Shortly after the game's servers were switched on late last night, the complaints began, with players finding themselves unable to log in to, and therefore play, the game. Problems persisted past the login screen, with users experiencing problems with character creation and being arbitrarily logged out. More >

Bruce Isaacs, attorney for the Infinity Ward Employee Group, said the payment showed Activision knew it was in the wrong, calling it a "cynical attempt to look good before the jury trial," which kicks off at the end of this month. More >

The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft has surpassed one million sales in less than a week, Microsoft has announced. More >

FIFA 12 has jumped to number one on the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. More >

Game was due to pay £100,000 in advance rent to its landlord, Lazari GP, the day before the nation's largest videogame retailer went into administration in March. More >

The deal, announced in a press release, means Valve holds the commercial rights to the Dota name. In February, Blizzard requested that the USPTO block Valve's application to trademark Dota, potentially threatening the scheduled release of Valve's long-awaited Dota 2, which is due this year. More >

Atari has clarified its intentions for Eden Games, insisting that it doesn't intend to close the Test Drive Unlimited studio, as originally reported. The company's financial report for the past fiscal year states that Eden Games has been accounted for as "Discontinued Operations" with Atari beginning a divestiture process of Eden's assets. More >

Sniper Elite V2 remains at the top of the UK all-formats chart for a second week, despite a 38 per cent drop in sales. Sony's PS3 exclusive Starhawk is this week's only new entry, but debuts at 17. More >

Despite the delay, Gallagher says the game is "looking amazing" and confirms that Crystal Dynamics will be showing off its progress at E3 next month. More >

Sony's share value has plummeted following the company's announcement yesterday that it had lost £3.6 billion over the prior fiscal year. More >

There are plenty of smartphone games that make great use of touchscreen controls on the App Store, but it's the games that limit themselves to one or two inputs that work best. While the bane of unresponsive, ill-fitting virtual controls layered over anything more complicated will likely be with us for some time yet, two Carnegie Mellon University researchers might have part of the answer in shear touch technology. More >

Microsoft is planning to bring a bespoke version of Internet Explorer 9 to Xbox 360's dashboard, according to a Verge source. The browser is currently being tested and and has Kinect gesture and voice control deeply woven into it, though it's not mandatory. More >

Veteran publisher Atari has reported decreased revenue for the past financial year, and has sold off a number of assets in order to focus efforts on mobile development. More >

It means Arkane Studios' striking firstperson stealth game, which was announced last July, is mere months away. The October date is especially interesting, coming just a day after Irrational Games delayed BioShock Infinite from October to next February. More >

Here's the first look at Soul Sacrifice, Marvelous AQL's Vita action game on which Capcom legend Keiji Inafune is lending a hand. More >

The figure was revealed by new CEO Kaz Hirai during an investor call following the release of the company's annual results, which showed total Sony losses of £3.6 billion. More >

Total net revenues were $1.17 billion (£728.5m), a drop of 19 per cent. Net income, or profit, fell by almost 24 per cent, to $384 million (£238.7m). Those declines, however, were not as severe as Activision had previously forecast, with revenue 21 per cent ahead of expectations. More >

Open world action game Prototype 2 has debuted at number one on the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. More >

Nintendo products dominated sales in Japan during the nation’s Golden Week holiday period. More >

Microsoft has cancelled the Inside Xbox video series in Europe as part of wider plans to transition from a first to a thirdparty content model. More >

DeNa CEO Isao Moriyasu admitted to reporters that the move would hit the company's finances hard. "We do not know if we can maintain the growth that we have enjoyed to this point," he said. "From here on, we need to properly devise products that are acceptable to society that can also maintain growth." More >

Sony has revealed Soul Sacrifice, Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune's first game since leaving Capcom. The Vita title is being developed by Japanese studio Marvelous AQL and Sony Computer Entertainment Japan. More >

Disney Interactive's revenue for the three months ending March 31 totalled $179 million (£110.8m), an increase of 15 per cent year on year. Its operating loss came to $70 million (£43.3m), a 39 per cent improvement on its 2011 figures. More >

The milestone, announced in a post on Rovio's website, has been reached in just 29 months, with half the total coming since last November, when the game crossed the 500 million download mark. More >

Rachet & Clank and Resistance developer Insomniac Games has revealed Outernauts, its first Facebook game. In the adventure RPG, players take on the role of a member of the United Earth's Outernaut force whose task is to capture and tame exotic aliens and tackle pirates. More >

Bethesda is marking the 20th Anniversary of id Software's classic firstperson shooter Wolfenstein 3D, with a free-to-play browser version of the game. More >

Irrational Games slapped an October release date on ambitious adventure in March, but in a brief press release its publisher reveals that the game has been delayed by four months. It will now release on February 26, 2013. More >

Stainless Games has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund Carmageddon: Reincarnation, a reboot of its chaotic, and bloody, vehicular combat series. The third game, Carmadgeddon TDR 2000, was released in twelve years ago, and studio is hoping to raise $400,000 to develop Reincarnation. It will be released digitally and, accruing the game's Kickstater page, be inspired by the "classic environments, cars, drivers and power-ups from the original, but dragged screaming and kicking into the current state of the rendered art". More >

The setting for Treyarch's upcoming Call Of Duty: Black Ops II could be in breach of a contractual agreement between Infinity Ward and Activision. An Infinity Ward Memorandum of Understanding sets out that Activision retains control of all Call Of Duty games, excluding those set in "modern day (post Vietnam), the near future or distant future". More >

Net sales revenue for the 12 months ending March 31 rose 15.2 per cent to ¥454.2 billion (£3.5bn). Every division saw revenue at least double, with the exception of the company's arcade business, where sales rose by 97.9 per cent. More >

Gameglobe sports numerous levels of its own, but the intent is for users to create their own. Details are rather thin on the ground at the moment, but the game's website pledges that the creation process will be simple and intuitive, with completed works given their own URL for ease of sharing. More >

Bloomberg reports that the value of Tanaka's 48.18 per cent stake in Gree fell by ¥56.1 billion after the company's share price fell by 23 per cent to the lowest level since it went public in 2008. David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo, said the ban on complete gacha could hit Gree's revenue by as much as 18 per cent. More >

Holtman's talk, Everyone's Business Is Business, will play up the strengths of Valve's flat organisational structure which was explained so well in the company's handbook for new employees which was recently leaked on the internet. More >

The deal, first reported last week, comes with a two-year Xbox Live membership and will cost consumers a total of $458.76. A 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect and two years of Xbox Live currently costs $380.18 on Amazon US. More >

The worst declines were in Capcom's consumer online games division, where revenue fell by almost 24 per cent despite Asura's Wrath, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and Street Fighter X Tekken all selling over a million units. Monster Hunter Tri G sold 1.6 million units on 3DS. More >

Japan's national consumer affairs agency is casting a stern eye over "complete gacha", a popular component of social games in Japan. Taking its name from gashapon capsule toys, gacha is essentially a slot machine, with players paying a nominal fee per turn for a chance at winning an in-game item. More >

In a slow week for new releases, the top ten is largely unchanged, and the sole new entry in the entire top 40 is the Vita release of Mortal Kombat, which enters the chart at number 33. More >

Speaking during an investor call following the release of EA's latest financial results, CEO John Riccitiello said he felt too much analyst and media attention had been focused on the fortunes of BioWare's long-awaited MMOG, which has seen subscriber numbers drop from 1.7 million in December to 1.3 million at the end of last month - a drop of 24 per cent. More >

Zenmiax Online Studios has released an announcement trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online, it's upcoming MMORPG set in the same universe as Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. More >

In a post on its website, EA admits that it has been so focused on building for the future that it hasn't done a good job of communicating Origin's existing feature-set. More >

In a press release, the publisher reveals that the expansion adds one major feature: superpowers. More >

Siliconera has published a translation of an extended interview with members of Team Ico that offers some charming insight into the game's development and team dynamics. The interview is taken from the official Shadow Of The Colossus guide, which was previously only available in Japan, and covers everything from character and colossi design, the creation of the game's haunting world and why cows didn't make the cut. More >

The survey, completed by an IGN reader, presents a range of possible PlayStation Plus plans and asks the customer to choose the one that appeals the most. It then applies further tweaks in a bid to home in on the user's ideal Plus package. More >

This HD remake includes the 2010 arcade original, with an optional 4:3 mode for purists. From next Monday, Rising Star will publish a series of tutorial videos to help newcomers find their feet at the source link below. More >

Molyneux, who recently left Microsoft and set up indie studio 22 Cans, will devise a day-long programme of events covering his career to date, his plans for the future, and the films, music, art, literature - and, it says here, dogs - that have inspired him. More >

Valve has dashed any hopes of a Half-Life 3 reveal at E3 by confirming that its has "no plans to make any product announcements" at this year's event. The confirmation came from Valve vice president of marketing Doug Lombardi, responding to Joystiq's enquiry regarding an email exchange between Gabe Newell and a player reported by fansite ValveTime. More >

The project, for which Replay sought $500,000, closed yesterday with $655,182 in funding from 14,081 backers. Replay, which acquired the rights to the series from Big Software, has coaxed series creator Al Lowe out of retirement to work on the game. More >

Motorola Mobility has been granted an injunction banning the sale of key Microsoft products in Germany. More >

Microsoft will reportedly release a $99 Xbox 360 Kinect bundle as early as next week, with the low price offset by a two-year Xbox Live subscription fee of $15 per month. More >

In a statement passed to GI.biz, new CEO Martyn Gibbs confirmed the departures, which form part of the retailer's restructuring drive following its exit from administration last month. More >

The update means users can remotely start downloads on their home PC. It's a welcome addition, though it isn't perfect; your PC must be on and logged in to Steam at all times, meaning it's not quite as convenient as it could be. More >

This one's been floating around since 2008, when a video of the game's tech demo was posted online, but now the curious first-person exploration game is on its way to PSN thanks to a new publishing deal with Sony. The team have formed a new company called Giant Sparrow and signed a three-game incubation deal similar to the one offered to thatgamecompany. More >

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has defended plans to price digital versions of 3DS and Wii U games in-line with their boxed counterparts, claiming digital software has the same intrinsic value. Responding to a question during a Q&A following the the Japanese company's financial results briefing last week, Iwata said that he felt consumers saw value in different things, and should have options to choose from. More >

Interim DICE CEO and Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach thinks the dominance of pre-owned at retail is responsible for the lack of diversity on offer in the console market. More >

The UK website for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 has revealed the name, release date and first details of the next entry in Activision’s hit firstperson shooter franchise. More >

Bethesda has announced that the first expansion pack for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, titled Dawnguard, will launch on Xbox 360 this summer. More >

Co-founder Jasper Koning has confirmed in an email that Awesomenauts will be released this Wednesday as planned, though he was unable to go into specifics. More >

Announced last month, the update allows players to use Kinect's voice recognition for Dragon Shouts, but the support for the Xbox 360 motion sensor isn't solely designed as a source of mild front-room embarrassment: there are over 200 commands, used to navigate the game's menus and map, and give commands to followers. More >