Microsoft Wishes Lionhead Was Still A Viable Studio, Admits ‘Misstep” In How It Handled Its Closure

Microsoft closed Lionhead Studios, the team behind the publisher’s famed Fable series, on April 29, 2016, and since then, it’s remained pretty much silent on that closure. According to a report by, Microsoft appears to be regretting how it treated Lionhead in a Xbox-focused documentary. IGN. 

Power On: The Story of Xbox, which was first announced in November, is now available to view. This documentary, which runs over 4 hours, covers all aspects of Xbox’s history, from its creation to the closing of Lionhead in 2005. Xbox general manager of global games publishing, Shannon Loftis, revealed how the company considered this closure and how it was handled. 

“One of the biggest missteps that we learned from in the past was Lionhead,” Loftis says in the sixth and final episode of the documentary series. “We had already published Fable 1, and it was a hit…People wanted more and so we bought Lionhead. These were great years. Then Fable 2 came out and Kinect arrived. Unfortunately, the Fable-Kinect union never happened. And 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.” 

Later in the documentary, Loftis said she wishes “Lionhead were still a viable studio,” too. 

Head of game creator experiences and ecosystem at Xbox, Sarah Bond, said Lionhead’s closure in 2016 was a moment of reflection for Microsoft. Bond said years later, the team looked back on that moment to ask what it had learned and how it could avoid repeating those same mistakes. 

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer expanded on this and said it taught Microsoft that when it acquires a studio, it’s Microsoft and Xbox’s job to “accelerate how they do what they do, not them accelerate what you do.” 

Xbox will officially bring Fable back to life, as it said in 2020. Playground Games (the Xbox-owned studio that developed the Forza Horizon series) is now developing this version. Take a look at Game Informer’sForza Horizon 5 review to see what you can expect from Playground Games. 

[Source: IGN]

Are you excited about Playground Games’ Fable? Are you wishing it were Lionhead who developed it? Comment below to let us know your thoughts!