In a blog post on the official Xbox site, Microsoft Studios Europe’s general manager Hanno Lemke today announced the termination of Fable Legends, and with it the closure of veteran UK studio Lionhead Games. Additionally, Lemke disclosed the windup of Danish developer Press Play Studios, and the cancellation of their survival game Project: Knoxville.
Guildford-based Lionhead was originally established in 1996 by Bullfrog founder Peter Molyneux. They developed the real-time strategy titles Black & White and Black & White 2, overlooked machinima/business simulation The Movies, and the first in the Fable series of action-RPGs (initially released on the original Xbox) before being acquired by Microsoft in 2006. Molyneux left in 2012 after the Kinect-based Fable: The Journey, and the studio began development on Fable Legends, a new cooperative multiplayer game in the Fable universe. At the time of cancellation, Fable Legends was in closed beta, slated for a mid-2016 release.
Press Play studios, from Copenhagen, developed Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Kalimba for Xbox One before embarking on their final game, Project: Knoxville, a cooperative survival game inspired by The Hunger Games and The Running Man.
In the statement, Lemke said:
We are committed to working closely with those affected by today’s news to find them new opportunities at Xbox, or partnering with the broader development community to help place them in jobs elsewhere in the games industry should they desire.
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