Xbox Admit Mistakes Taken With Lionhead Studios

At one point, I was very much in that group of people who almost exclusively owned PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. Never touching Xbox after Microsoft’s first foray into gaming consoles, to which they banked on the sellability of The Rock to shift a few consoles. How did that work out? Anyway, the 20-years of Xbox has been a strange one that we’ve heard about with rumors of trying to buy Nintendo and other stupid things that make no sense. I mean, honestly, who in their right mind thought the Kinect was the best piece of technological hardware we were going to make in the early 2010s?

With the 20-years of the Microsoft gaming division celebrating the milestone, the company put together a 6-part documentary series in celebration. As IGN notes, Microsoft/Xbox has admitted to one of their biggest mistakes. Drink it in while you can: If Nintendo did this, you’d find a Japanese man surrounded by Saké after he committed seppuku. Anyway, it shouldn’t be shocking one of the biggest mistakes came as a result of going almost blindly into the fire that was the Kinect, leading to the demise of Lionhead Studios.

You may remember the studio most fondly for its fantasy series based around a young lad meeting all of the UK’s best actors and comedians, often referred to as Fable. If you are unfortunate enough to remember the 2009 E3 conference, you’ll remember the horrors of Project Milo (or Milo and Kate). According to Microsoft’s General Manager of Global Games Publishing, Shannon Loftis, the push for the latter was the downfall.

Loftis states that while Fable was a hit and the reason for buying the studio out in 2006, “after Fable 2, [the] Kinect came along and the Fable-Kinect marriage just never really took. Then Fable: The Journey was a passion project for a lot of people, but I think it deviated pretty significantly from the pillars of what made Fable 1 and 2 so popular.” Completely ignore the fantastic Fable 3, why don’t you? I know a lot of people don’t like it, but those people are idiots.

Xbox’s Head of Game Creator Experiences and Ecosystem, Sarah Bond, went on to say that following the ten-year partnership, “A couple of years later we reflected back on that experience. What did we learn, and how do we not repeat our same mistakes?” I think I could tell you, but everyone’s favorite E3 uncle chipped in next. Xbox boss and everyone’s favorite E3 fighter, Phil Spencer, went on to say: “You acquire a studio for what they’re great at now, and your job is to help them accelerate how they do what they do, not them accelerate what you do.” Well, that’s what happens when you react to something like the Wii.

Ultimately, the downfall of Lionhead was telling a studio to focus on a technology that no one wanted, but following the Wii’s crazy appeal with mums and grandparents, everyone was trying something. Remember the EyeToy and the creepy EyePet thing for the PS3 in 2010? I swear those furry little monkey-things haunt my dreams every night. Then again, so does the horrors of that Harry Potter Kinect game. Loftis went on to say, “I wish Lionhead were still a viable studio;” I wish you’d allow someone to create a sequel to The Movies, but we’re all hoping many things for the future. Mostly that Fable 4 is actually good.