JUNE 25, 2009 • Gathering of Developers/Gamecock veterans Mike Wilson and Harry Miller have formed a new production and distribution company, Devolver Digital.  The firm will be supporting the release of Croteam’s Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD on PC and Xbox Live Arcade. The original Serious Sam was released through g.o......

JUNE 25, 2009 • Electronic Arts combined its Bioware and Mythic divisions into one MMO group. Management of day-to-day operations of the new group will be vested in Bioware executives, with long-time Mythic chief Mark Jacobs stepping down and leaving the company. In the days following, it was announced that Mythic staff would assist on Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. Impact: MMOs are a massive undertaking with a high risk/high reward payoff.  It is.....

JUNE 22, 2009 • As micro-transactions for online games grow in North America, developers and publishers are increasingly looking for experienced monetization partners. With more MMOs and other titles generating revenue in smaller and smaller chunks are the extra considerations that come into play with a greater frequency of consumer transactions. In the same way it doesn’t make sense to engineer a new game engine with every new title, neither does it makes sense to develop a separate back.....

JUNE 19, 2009 • Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick took Sony Computer Entertainment to task for not reducing the price of the PS3. “I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better,” Kotick told The Times in the U.K. “They have to cut the price, because if they .....

JUNE 16, 2009 • As the game industry rapidly evolves from a packaged goods business to a more service oriented busi- ness, it becomes increasingly important to monitor ongoing product usage. Mea- suring raw unit and dollar sales at retail is now only becoming a starting metric for the game industry. The ability to sell subscrip- tions, downloadable content, advertising and other product enhancements requires ongoing monitoring of usage. Keeping consumers engaged with a product over a long p.....

JUNE 10, 2009 • Doom Resurrection for the iPhone was announced by id Software. The game was built from the ground up as an iPhone title in partnership  with Escalation Studios, although it does make use of Doom 3 assets.  Doom Resurrection features its own parallel plot, and is designed to be fun, as wel.....

JUNE 9, 2009 • Daily Variety reported that one of the major reasons Atari acquired Cryptic Studios was to develop an MMO based on the Neverwinter Nights franchise originally created by Bioware. Atari owns rights to the franchise, but Bioware will have no participation in the title, targeted at a 2011 release......

JUNE 8, 2009 • The future of distribution is online. Across a spectrum of entertainment industries and services, a growing number of businesses are reaching consumers via online distribution rather than through old-fashioned brick-and-mortar storefronts. Of course, retailing is not on its way out, but indicators are strong that a lot of consumers will predominantly turn to the Web for their entertainment in the years ahead. Online distribution for the PC has been around for years, bu.....