News (Page 3883)

Japanese publisher Namco has reported significantly improved earnings for the first half of its fiscal year, with sales up almost 14 per cent and profits up over 180 per cent thanks to the success of several key titles.

A new joint initiative between MIT Comparative Media Studies and the Entertainment Software Association will see a three-day conference on the educational merits of gaming running at E3.

The latest official market figures from the USA are being claimed as a major victory by Nintendo, which has seen the GameCube's market share for the month of October boosted by ten points and overtaking the Xbox'.

Japanese publisher Tecmo, best known for its Dead or Alive series of beat 'em up titles, has announced a 260 million Yen (€2 million) profit in the first half of 2003, on rising sales of 3.9 billion Yen (€30 million).

Publisher Acclaim has posted its results for the second quarter of its current financial year, revealing losses of $4 million on declining revenues of $41.3 million, and has warned that tough times lie ahead for the company.

<i>gi.biz</i> is proud to announce the launch of the GI Directory, a classified listing of hundreds of key games industry companies from across a wide variety of sector - accessible for free from today on the site.

A new application launched by UK mobile game developer Morpheme, MorphMark, promises to provide a standard benchmark for measuring the gaming performance of a wide variety of mobile phone devices.

A new report from market analyst group US Bancorp Piper Jaffray suggests that the current generation of hardware has seen its sales peak in the USA this year, and predicts a small decline in the 2004 figures.

Nokia has launched a new incentive to drive sales of the N-Gage in North America, offering three free game titles of the consumer's choice with each device sold - on top of a $100 rebate already being offered by key retailers.

Nintendo's biggest hope for Christmas has had a strong debut, but has failed to displace FIFA 2004 from the top spot in the UK charts, coming in at number three behind Activision's True Crime.

The purchase of a minority shareholding in Japanese media giant Bandai by Nintendo in late September has come under scrutiny once again, as an interview in a Japanese magazine reveals in-fighting on the Bandai board over the sale.

Japanese publisher Capcom has announced a profit for the first half of fiscal 2003, turning around a loss last year, and has given unit software sales guidance for each of the hardware platforms in the current year.

Computing giant IBM is now involved in chip design for all three next-generation consoles, announcing late last week that it will be providing processor technology for Nintendo's next games system.

Sales of Nintendo's GameCube rose by over 145 per cent in Japan last week as the highly anticipated Mario Kart: Double Dash went straight in at number one in its first week on sale.

Japanese publisher Konami has reported a large rise in its profits for the first half of the 2003 fiscal year, with the boost attributed largely to the success of its video games and trading card games in the USA and Europe.

British developer starts a beautiful friendship with Californian publisher

Leading UK videogame retail chain GAME Group has been awarded the Customer Focus Award at the National Business Awards ceremony in London, and was highly commended for the Business of the Year award.

Medal of Honor GBA team made redundant as sequel fails to materialise

Japanese publisher Sega has seen a massive boost in its first half profits thanks to better than expected performance of its arcade division, while the loss-making console games division is rapidly approaching break-even.

Japanese giant Nintendo has announced a loss for the first half of 2003, as expected, and has reiterated its plan to launch an innovative new game product next year - with an official unveiling expected at E3.

An innovative development "incubation" company which was founded by some of the pioneers of the Xbox project with a view to acting as a middleman between publishers and developers has been forced to close due to lack of funding.