MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The upcoming Fable Legends is the first step in a process that is transforming Lionhead into a games-as-a-service studio” according to its new boss.
John Needham, a veteran of Gazillion Entertainment and Cryptic, was named as Peter Molyneux’s successor at Lionhead in April of last year.
Now he plans to take the studio’s Fable IP and adapt it for what he sees as the new shape of the modern gaming landscape.
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,” he told Edge. I am the person pivoting Lionhead into a games-as-service studio. [Fable] Legends is quite different from previous Fable games.
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. That’s the nature of games as a service – you keep adding systems and features and content.”
All of which seems to point to a possible free-to-play (or even subscription) based future for the IP, right?
We haven’t talked about the business model yet,” Needham added. We’re just trying to build a great game.”
Fable Legends is still without a release date on Xbox One.
