(Mission): Microsoft. Audioplayer is loading. Microsoft admitted that its handling of the defunct Lionhead Studios was “one of the biggest mistakes” the company made. The comments were made during an interview with the creator of the new documentary “Power on the Xbox” series. The sixth episode covers the long, tumultuous Xbox One launch and the gradual progression the company took to prioritise gaming again. Having been supported by the numerous studio acquisitions (thanks to IGN) it has been well-established. When evaluating the manner that it began on acquired studios, Sarah Bond said one of the biggest missteps that we learned from the past was Lionhead. Shannon Loftis, former Xbox Game Studios general manager, expressed his support for Bond. “We already published Fable 1 and it was a hit. People loved him,” she said. It was like a moving stained-glass window “The beauty of that game”. Since the people wanted more, we bought Lionhead, These were good years. “The game was magnificent, and everything was sorted out. But in the second game, Kinect came along and the Fable-Kinect marriage actually never took place. And then Fable was a passion project for many people, but I think he got better and better than what made Fable 1 and 2 so popular. Lionhead was the studio in which Kinect was put up for the year 2010s, with the likes of Rare. Despite the fact that the latter made it out onto the other side, it turned out to be a bad idea for the former. “We acquired Lionhead in 2006, and shut up it in 2016” continued Bond. After a couple of years of study we found out about this lesson: “What did we learn?” How are wen’t repeating our same mistakes?’ Phil Spencer implied that Lionhead’s loss influenced the way that Xbox viewed its developers. “You acquire a studio for what they’re great at now,” he said. This task is to help them do what they do. That’s probably the same thing as that of Spencer who said: OK, we shouldn’t have put them on Kinect or forced them to play a live game called Fable. The latter, Fable Legends, was content-complete and in a live beta when Microsoft opted to close the studio, and never saw its release. Lionhead was a very fantastic studio, with the Fable series still being named one of my favourites. It was an extremely sad closure and a developer that many still miss today. It’s something that present and former Microsoft figures are both feeling, and Loftis wrapping her interview with saying “I wish Lionhead were still a viable studio.” Bond said that the “challenges” Microsoft followed with Lionhead “taught us what we were supposed to do this time,” while now the company puts a lot more emphasis on letting studios continue doing what they’re doing with its 23 different acquisitions.
