—UK games sales soar: It sounds unlikely, but according the Charttracker the UK’s video game market could be beating Japan’s. Unit sales were up 37 percent and revenue up 21 percent for the first five weeks of the year—and software sales grew 26 percent last year, making the UK the world’s second-biggest games market after the US. And GfK-ChartTrack’s UK director Dorian Bloch predicts that the UK can better Japan’s video games revenue this year. Via mvcuk.com.

—NCsoft: Korean games pubisher NCsoft is cutting 55 jobs at its Brighton office as it folds four departments leaving just 30 staff covering sales, marketing and customer service according to reports. In December NCsoft, the company behind the Guildwars series, re-organised its non-Korean operations into a new division, NCwest, and merged its European and US activities, with the loss of about 70 jobs. From Gamesindustry.biz.

—MMO Life: Amsterdam-based massively-multiplayer online games portal MMO Life, which last week secured £900,000 of first round funding, has bought a 49 stake in Berlin-based MMOCluster, a multi-language series of MMO portals catering for gamers’ leveling, raiding and guild-hosting needs. The deal adds 80,000 users to the MMO family of sites and MMOCluster’s will be added to MMO Life’s first major portal, MMOhub.org.