San Francisco - CMP Game Group this week announced that it will launch a sister event for mobile games at its Game Developers Conference, which will be held in San Francisco in February. IGF Mobile, part of the event's Independent Games Festival, is a contest that will reward developers of titles for Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, cell phones and other mobile devices with $20,000 in prizes. Submissions for individual $2,000 prize categories like Innovation in Mobile Game Design and Audio Achievement, and the $10,000 prize category for Best Game of IGF Mobile, are currently being accepted at a link below.

San Francisco - Publisher CMP Game Group's Game Developer Research division this week released a new census that found there are nearly 600 companies developing and publishing video games in the U.S. and Canada, and more than 39,700 people employed in the development or publishing of games in the U.S.