Microsoft said at the end of last year that it’d delayed Fable Legends until it could be sure that the game would offer users the best experience possible. Today the company confirmed that the developer Lionhead will never get that chance. Fable Legends is cancelled. What’s worse, Lionhead Studios is being shuttered.
Microsoft announced Fable Legends’ cancellation and news of the studios closure this morning in a post on Xbox Wire. Besides Lionhead, Microsoft is also shuttering Press Play, a smaller studio that created Max: The Curse of Brotherhood for Xbox One and Max and The Magic Marker for Windows phone, iPhone and Android. Press Play had only recently asked the public feedback on what its next project should be. That game, Project Knoxville is also cancelled. The company says that it’s working to find employees of each studio job opportunities elsewhere within the Xbox organization. The closure of Lionhead is only being “proposed” at this point.
“I speak for all of Xbox when I say that despite this news, we remain committed to the development communities in the UK and Europe, and Xbox will continue to support new IP and originality in the games we offer on our platforms, whether they’re AAA blockbusters like Quantum Break from Remedy, adventurous new IPs like Sea of Thieves from Rare, or unique new creations from independent developers like Moon Studios with Ori.” – Microsoft’s Hanne Lemke
Fable Legend’s cancellation comes as a huge shock. There wasn’t an event over the past year that Microsoft didn’t mention the game at. The title was to be one of two games that featured Xbox Live interoperability on PC and Xbox One. Players on both platforms were to have the ability to team up. With the game cancelled, Gigantic is the only game that still supports the feature.
I suppose now I’ll never get that proper Fable 3 sequel that I’d hoped for all these years.
