GamesIndustry.biz and IndustryGamers.com are set to merge this month, relaunching the new site with added staff, tools and services.
The site will become available to all readers, with verified industry professionals still able to take advantage of advanced tools, industry-only discussions areas, a redeveloped company directory, and more.
The current network already unites more than 90,000 registered industry professionals, freelancers and students, and with the help of IndustryGamers' US audience is targeting more than 500,000 unique users per month.
Fun Infused Games developer Kris Steele has criticised the Xbox Live Indie Game market, and suggested that the new dashboard has buried independent games.
"Ultimately I do not believe the XBLIG market is growing," he said on his blog.
"I believe these numbers show that. I believe the biggest factor is Microsoft's burying of XBLIG."
Torrent website BTJunkie has closed down voluntarily in response to legal pressure on its contemporaries, after more than six years in operation.
Visitors to the site, which had boasted of being the biggest collection of torrents on the internet, are now greeted by a farewell message.
"This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!"
A Reddit user claiming to be an ex-Zynga software engineer has accused the social gaming company of cloning popular titles, mistreating contract workers and "creepy" behaviour.
"Tiny Tower + D Heights is all standard operating procedure here. If you can't buy em, clone em," user Mercenary-Games revealed, in an 'ask me anything' post on the social news website.
"Even the core technology for Farmville (MyMiniLife), was bought. The only 'home grown' codebases at Zynga is MafiaWars2 and maybe Poker, the rest of their tech was just bought from small studios. Look up Dextrose Engine. To me, that's utterly creepy. They try to choke out the competition by gating all these engine tech."
Konami almost doubled its year-on-year net profits for the nine-month period ending December 31, 2011.
The company reported profit of ¥17 billion on revenues of ¥194.5 billion, versus ¥9.6 billion in profit on ¥188.3 billion in revenues in the same period last year.
However, the company's Digital Entertainment division - which comprises its console, PC, mobile and social gaming output - showed little revenue growth, increasing from ¥97.9 billion to ¥99.4 billion.
The EU has sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, requesting that the search giant delay the rollout of its forthcoming privacy policy changes.
Currently, Google has over 60 different privacy policies which cover its plethora of services. From March 1, 2012 it wants to amalgamate them into a single policy - ostensibly to improve services and simplify understanding, albeit with an acknowledged side benefit of increasing revenue from targeted ads.
The changes have been widely broadcast by Google across many of its services, with pop-ups, emails and other notifications.
The social gaming company Kabam is moving its headquarters to San Francisco, VentureBeat reports.
The company's employees will now occupy 63,000 square feet in the same office space that houses Twitter. Zynga, Playfish, Playdom and 6waves Lolapps also have major offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The company sees the new offices as a first-step in its next phase of growth, allowing its 450 employees to work together more closely.
FIFA 12 has finally been knocked off the top of the UK software chart by Japanese RPG Final Fantasy XIII-2.
In fact the new entry heralded a Japanese invasion of the charts, with fellow new releases Metal Gear Solid HD Collection debuting at 2, and Soulcalibur V arriving at 5.
Battlefield 3 moved up to third place from 5, with FIFA 12 dropping to 4. Last week's big new entry, Resident Evil: Revelations, fell from 6 to 19.
The NPD Group will now include sales data from US Walmart stores and walmart.com in its reports, after signing a deal with the American retailer.
"This agreement is truly a game changer for NPD and for the industry," said NPD CEO Karyn Schoenbart.
"With Walmart data, we will be able to provide our clients with world class information and solidify our leadership position as the premier source of market insight in our industries."
Apple has removed a number of cloned App Store products from the independent developer Anton Sinelnikov, The Guardian reports.
Sinelnikov is responsible for such products as Plant vs. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, Numbers With Friends and Temple Jump - all near-identical copies of major App Store hits.
The games are seemingly designed and named to create confusion at the point of purchase, as evidenced by complaints from dissatisfied customers in user reviews.
Screen Yorkshire has launched The Yorkshire Content Fund, which will offer £15 million worth of investment to games, digital content, TV and films produced within the region.
"The advent of ubiquitous broadband has opened up huge opportunities for video games developers to self-publish their titles and, in doing so, retain the lions' share of the revenues - Yorkshire, in particular, has a large number of successful, independent developers who find themselves in a fantastic position to grasp these opportunities," said Charles Cecil or Revolution Software, who is also a Screen Yorkshire board member.
"To capitalise on these opportunities upfront investment is required and can be very challenging to secure in this tough financial environment. The Yorkshire Content Fund will address this issue and also lead to significant job creation."
Japanese social network Gree has posted impressive figures for its Q2, FY2012, registering a profit of ¥12.74 billion (£104.9m) and sales of ¥41.5 billion (£342.7m).
As a result of the better than expected performance, Gree has raised its projections for the full year's figures upping its prediction to a profit of ¥44-50 billion (£363.4 - £413 m) and sales of ¥160-170 billion (£1.32 - £1.4 bn).
Year on year, those numbers mark a profit growth of 206 per cent.
Stephen Toulouse, the director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, will leave his role on February 15.
"This is a positive thing," he said on his personal blog.
"I have nothing but confidence in the future of Microsoft and specifically Xbox and Xbox Live. I have enormous gratitude for my time there. I want to finish my next book, and explore other opportunities."
EA has confirmed it is restructuring its Vancouver operations, and cutting a small number of jobs in the process.
"EA in Vancouver is transforming its studio to align with EA's transformation to high-growth digital formats, including online, social gaming and free-to-play," a company spokesperson told IndustryGamers.
"As the BC studio makes this transformation, a small number of employees are being impacted while most others are being retrained, redeployed and rolling-on to new projects."
Sony will be renaming all PSN accounts as Sony Entertainment Network accounts this Wednesday, alongside a system update for PS3 and Vita.
No action is necessary from users, and the change will not affect accounts viewed via the PSP.
The rebranding appears to be part of a drive to unify Sony's online media services under one banner, something which a press release accompanying the announcement speaks of in broad terms without going into detail.
Dr Paul Howard-Jones knows he's courting controversy by arguing that video games stimulate the brain in addictive ways; nothing so riles hardcore gamers as the suggestion that they've got a problem. But Howard-Jones has turned this compulsion into a positive spin; he argues games could save education.
His training is in psychology - despite that he's the Senior Lecturer at Graduate School of Education at University of Bristol, specialising in Neuroscience and Education. "I'm a psychologist working in education who does neuroscience" he explains, which obviously prompts queries about where video games enter. The explanation is a little complicated. His research focuses on better ways of helping students learn and he's settled on the compulsive-aspects of computer games as an exceptionally good technique.
"It certainly didn't arise from trying to find an application for interactive whiteboards." says Howard-Jones. "It actually arose from the nucleus accumbens (the NAcc, a knot of neurons important in reward, pleasure, addiction, aggression and fear) and realising we'd missed a big trick in education, in that we have an overly simple idea of the relationship between reward and learning."
The latest figures from Viacom show a 65 per cent fall in net earnings compared to the previous year, a fall it at least partly attributes to its on going dispute with Harmonix.
For Q1 2012 the company showed net earnings of $212 million for the quarter ending December 31 2011. This figure showed a $398 million drop from the previous year's $610 million.
It was a drop that James W Barge, chief financial officer, blamed on the recent legal battle with Harmonix.
SEGA Sammy has released its nine month financial report for the period ending December 31, 2011, revealing a shrinking videogames business but a resurgence in the sales of Pachinko machines.
Overall, the business made a profit of ¥34.4 billion (£284.7m) for the period, with sales of ¥311.7 billion (£2.58bn), a year on year increase of 0.5 per cent.
Of that total, ¥64.1 billion in net sales came from the Consumer Business arm, which includes SEGA's videogame business alongside its toy and animation sectors. That represents a shrinkage of 4.9 per cent from the same period in the year previous.
Eutechnyx and Brain in a Jar - two UK racing specialists - are teaming for a new project to be announced later in the year.
Brain in a Jar focuses on simulations with its proprietary motorsports game engine, and has assisted developers such as Codemasters and Reflections in the past.
"We're very excited to be working with Eutechnyx on one of its biggest projects this year, as we're keen to demonstrate the two pillars on which our company is founded on - great technology and intelligent staff scaling."
Nippon Ichi's latest consolidated earnings estimate for the fiscal year has increased totals for operating income and net income.
Net income estimates are up to ¥203 million from ¥59 million, and operating income is now ¥303 million, previously ¥107 million. Strong sales on both PlayStation Vita and PS3 for the Disgaea have helped boost the numbers for the Japanese publisher.
Sales are down from ¥2,288 million to ¥2,246 million, which the company attributes to release delays for The Witch And The Hundred Soldiers and the US edition of Disgaea 3 Return.
