Rob Fahey (Page 139)

British publisher SCi has announced record turnover and profits for a second successive year, largely due to the continued success of the Conflict Desert Storm franchise, which has now sold over 3.2 million units globally.

SCEE boss Chris Deering will be promoted to the role of president of Sony Europe early next year, with David Reeves, currently executive VP for sales and marketing, taking on the role of president and COO at SCEE.

The Japanese software market topped 1.5 million unit sales last week, with Sony's Hot Shots Golf 4 topping the ranking as sales of the PS2 continued to soar thanks to a recent price cut to the hardware.

Leeds-based handheld games developer Mobius Entertainment has acquired fellow Yorkshire based handheld specialist Spellbound, in a move which the studio hopes will help it to gear up for development on Sony's PSP.

Publisher association ELSPA has announced that it is to host a one-day conference in London next February dealing with the issues of online gaming, with talks from speakers from a wide range of companies involved in the area.

Videogame website networks GameSpy and IGN are set to merge, in a move which they claim will create the largest network of gaming websites on the Internet, with traffic exceeding 673 million pageviews per month.

Publisher Sega of America has filed a patent infringement suit with a San Francisco federal court, claiming that Fox Interactive's Simpsons Road Rage copies patented gameplay elements from Sega's own Crazy Taxi series.

Japanese toy maker Bandai is pulling out of the game hardware market for good, and plans to continue its focus on developing games for other manufacturer's platforms, according to president Takeo Takasu.

The latest entry into the mobile console space, a unit called the Gametrac, is set to offer GPS positioning and data communications functionality, as well as music and movie playback.

This year's version of the annual Nokia Game mobile phone game tournament clocked up over a million players, with Finnish giant Nokia recording over six million visitors to the Nokia Game homepage.

Publisher Take Two Interactive has finalised its acquisition of TDK Mediactive, but the deal excludes one of TDK's most high profile properties, with Dreamworks' Shrek IP going instead to Activision.

The performance of Vivendi Universal Games has continued to decline, with the company's third quarter results revealing a massive €58 million operating loss and falling revenues.

A number of features have been removed from the original specification of the PSX home media centre, in a move which Sony claims is necessary in order to launch the system before Christmas.

UK development studio Warthog has warned that its first-half results are likely to show a loss of some £2 million, with more losses to come in the full year due to difficult trading conditions caused by a number of factors.

Videogames fashion label Joystick Junkies is set to start Advent with a bang this Thursday, with a masked party featuring club legends Dirty Vegas - and we have 20 guest list passes to give away to our readers.

A picture purporting to be concept art of Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation 3, has been circulated on the Internet, showing a sleek silver console with a slot-loading DVD drive.

Sony is set to finally roll out the PlayStation 2 in China on December 20, priced at 1,988 Yuan (€200) and accompanied by two software titles, Ape Escape 2 and ICO, which will retail for 168 Yuan (€17) each.

ESC, the Entertainment Software Charity, has announced the launch of a new games pack for the Xbox, which will comprise three popular software titles sold for £29.99, with the proceeds going to disadvantaged young people.

Dennis Publishing's annual Golden Joysticks award ceremony saw Nintendo storm home with five statuettes for its shelves, with public voting for the awards this year topping 88,000 registered votes.

The division of Sony responsible for the PlayStation product line, Sony Computer Entertainment, is to become a wholly owned subsidiary thanks to a new deal which will see Ken Kutaragi returning his stake to the parent company.

Championship Manager developer Sports Interactive has signed a publishing deal with Sega Europe for its new title, ice hockey management sim Eastside Hockey; <i>gi.biz</i> spoke to managing director Miles Jacobson.

Microsoft's Xbox has had its most successful week to date this year in Japan, capturing almost 7 per cent market share following a price cut to the hardware and the launch of a Project Gotham Racing 2 bundle deal.