Xbox Boss Responds to Lionhead Closure News

If you clowns really think that MS is just going to leave all that royalty + XBL money on the table and get out of the console business you're out of your mind.

So, if they don't close LionHead... Maybe a real Fable game, in the future?

Those who were in the beta should have an idea.

When a door closes, another opens. Interesting times ahead.

Phil, buddy...you've got to start wearing that tie!

Honestly, this is completely the wrong way... a software company really should focus on that. Develop and publish software msft, that will get some earnings going.

Everybody acting like Lion Head has done anything worth buying in the last 5yrs. it's obvious that their best work is behind them at this point it's better to take those resources and put them on a new IP made by a team with a better track record.

Neither console is putting out anything ..ps3 and xbox 360 pumped games out..I have both ps4 and xb1 its hard to get behind either of them..Phil spencer will turn out to be a wolf in sheeps clothing..all his hurah speeches are wearing thin

So how's that whole "1st party focus" going for you, Philly boy? Not too good, it seems. But then, exclusives in general are becoming more and more of a sore spot for the XB1.

I believe it's a corporate decision rather than just a decision made by Spencer or his team. I also believe that Spencer have almost zero say when the decision is made in front of him. Everyone knows the Xbox division isn't the focus of this corporate group called Microsoft, but is always the first one that gets the knife.

Microsoft's first party situation is looking pretty dire.

Is their plan to force studios to make endless sequels until nobody wants them anymore and they have to be shut down?

Lionhead lost more with Molyneux than they'd like to admit. Fable 3, while divisive, was the last Fable game I loved. This beta did nothing for me, and only seemed unique because of the humor.

"It's impossible to go into all the detail and I apologize for that,"

That's okay Phil. I am here to help. Fable 1 was a decent enough game that fell well short of expectations, but was mostly worth it anyway. Fable 2 improved on the formula and basically represented the high mark for the series. Fable 3 was a soulless piece of shit and marked the time in most major franchises when the magic is gone and they're just shoveling stuff out the door and relying on the name to sell the game.

Fable Kinect (it's real name) was an idiotic attempt to revive the franchise by pairing it with a fad technology that both Sony and Microsoft were trying desperately to copy from Nintendo when they caught lightning in a bottle in the hopes of reaching some mythical mass market audience that was going to be a dependable cash cow going forward similar to how so many companies decided to abuse their major single player RPGs to try and capture the mythical mass market MMO cash cow. (And now everybody is chasing after mobile and social gaming.)

That brings us to Fable Legends, which was based on another faulty misconception of last generation that every game in the world needs a multiplayer mode and needs to be converted to be multiplayer focused even if that's not the thing that created the initial fanbase to begin with. Nobody was excited at all about Fable Legends as a result of that faulty vision and the previous two unholy abominations in the series. Like with the Kinect, you eventually wised up and decided to cut your losses and stop throwing good money after bad.

So, to cliff notes this whole thing, the game was cancelled because it never should have been approved to begin with and a lot of people are going to get laid off because of blunders at the executive level.

I think I covered it.

Lionhead was a bunch of con artists and deserved to be closed down years ago.

They can rot in pieces.

They did the right thing, but several years late.

Literally nobody was excited for this game.

Based Phil "fanboy destroyer" Spencer.

I was only going to play it because it was free. If it had cost money, I wouldn't have bought it. Not my type of game. Too bad for Lionhead and the other devs that lost their jobs though.

What's the deal with the other 6 studios that disappeared off their official studio list also?

That's 8 studios in one day. Thats pretty shocking.

Couldn't care less about Fable, I'm more bummed about Press Play shutting down...Max was great and I was really looking forward to a sequel.

Phil Spencer is a boss, no matter how iffy Xbone is as a console.

Ran out of things to say.