Xbox One game Fable Legends more of a "service" than a traditional game

Fable creator Lionhead Studios is moving away from what might be considered "standard" development and is instead positioning itself as a "games as a service" developer through its upcoming online-focused Xbox One game Fable Legends.

“I think the real magic in the industry now is taking great traditional gameplay and IP, and this new connected world, and mashing them together," studio boss John Needham told Edge. "I am the person pivoting Lionhead into a games-as-service studio. Legends is quite different from previous Fable games.”

Games as a service, in the context of Fable Legends, means that the game will essentially be a platform through which "almost everything" in the Fable universe is delivered, Needham said.

“We can do other styles of Fable games, and keep them within Fable Legends. My plan is that Legends is essentially a platform for almost everything Fable going forward. It’s a long-range plan, of five to ten years, where we’re going to build and keep building onto Fable Legends," he said. "That’s the nature of games as a service--you keep adding systems and features and content."

Lionhead is, of course, not the first studio to think about games as a service as opposed to shipping a game and then moving onto something new. Perhaps the best example is World of Warcraft, which is now in its tenth consecutive year of continued operation. Blizzard Entertainment has supported that game with a handful of expansions and regular content updates as a means to keep players engaged for a long period of time.

Needham, who has an extensive background in online gaming, said Lionhead has much the same goal for Fable Legends.

"It all comes down to listening to your community, building content into the game that they want, and then iterating upon that,” he said.

Many games that operate as services are free-to-play or subscription-based, but Needham isn't ready to discuss business models for Fable Legends just yet. "We're just trying to build a great game," he said.

A beta for Fable Legends will be offered this year, but a release date for the full game has not been announced. Lionhead is also working on a non-Fable game, though no details about this project are available. Lionhead's most recent release was Fable Anniversary, a high-definition update of the 2004 original role-playing game.