Last year Lion Head Studios (creators of the Fable series) shut its doors and many, many Fable fans cried out and were suddenly silenced.
The studio’s (now canceled) upcoming release Fable Legends was being developed for the Xbox One with a later release for PC through Valve’s Steam distribution given that Steam has a huge install base and easy to develop games for.
So what went wrong?
Windows 10, that’s what went wrong.
Now, I’m not here to bash Windows 10, I’m a PC user and I happen to like Windows 10 for computing, however, as it would seem, when it comes to gaming Windows 10 and Microsoft’s Project Helix (their plan to unite Xbox One and PC gaming) has created a mess.
According to an unamed source (as reported by the YouTube Channel The Know) Lion Head was pretty far along in their development of Fable Legends when they were told by Microsoft that they had to make the game compatible for Windows 10 (a’lah Tomb Raider and Quantum Break). This created a problem for the studio since they had already had Valve’s Steam distribution in mind and not the Windows Store and they had to rebuild entire sections of the game which cost them a lot of money that they didn’t have.
In the end this kerfuffle lead to the studio having to shut down and Fable fans unable to get their hands on Legends which would have been a departure from the series but a game that had a cool premise.
So what do you think dear reader? Do you care about MS trying to unite PC and Xbox? (I don’t) And what do you make of this tale of woe from Lion’s Head? Let us know in the comments below.
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