Lionhead: The inside story In October 2008, Microsoft released Lionhead's Fable 2 to critical and commercial acclaim. At a launch party an emotional Peter Molyneux held aloft glowing reviews and praised the exhausted team of developers who had spent the previous four years pouring everything they had into the game. Fable 2 would go on to win a BAFTA and become the best-selling role-playing game for the Xbox 360. Lionhead was on top of the world. Seven-and-a-half years later, Lionhead's 100 or so staff were called to its in-house cafe for a meeting. There, Hanno Lemke, General Manager of Microsoft Studios Europe, announced that Fable Legends was cancelled and Lionhead would close. The inside story of how Lionhead rose and fell is difficult but also important. Lionhead was co-founded in 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance and Steve Jackson, but it was conceived earlier, while Molyneux was at Bullfrog, the ground-breaking PC game maker of Populous, Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper. And the takeaways. No.
Rare: Doing new things is in the culture of the studio Reports of Rare’s death appear to have been greatly exaggerated as the studio scored its first No.1 hit in 17 years. But why did so many believe they were dying in the first place? ‘Who killed Rare?’ That was the headline to a consumer article written three years ago, and it’s hard to imagine how the team at Rare felt about it – particularly when you consider they weren’t actually dead. The angle of the feature was that Rare, a ‘90s icon of UK games development, had faded into obscurity under the corporate gaze of its new owners Microsoft. Yet the mood has changed. It makes you wonder that perhaps Rare was actually alive all this time. “The idea Rare isn’t what it was a few years ago… to me, I grew up as someone who played Rare games,” explains Adam Park, lead producer at the Twycross studio. “I grew up near Rare. “Yes the industry has changed. “As with any studio, people come and go. Golden era Of course, Rare has changed. Another change is in how the studio works together. Perfect change
Beyond the console: Xbox leaders detail Microsoft’s gaming future, led by xCloud streaming service The days of the Xbox console as the primary focus of Microsoft’s gaming division are numbered. Microsoft has spent the last few years refocusing its gaming strategy, expanding the Xbox brand beyond the console as the centerpiece of the division to a push to reach gamers playing on virtually every device around the world. The tech giant is plowing resources into developing an ambitious game streaming service powered by its cloud computing division, and beefing up its library of homegrown titles. Game subscription services have been around for decades. Microsoft laid out this strategy on a tour of its gaming facilities at its Redmond, Wash., home base this week. “We know we aren’t going to sell 2 billion consoles, and there are a lot of markets around the world where a console is not necessarily part of the lifestyle,” said Kareem Choudhry, corporate vice president of gaming cloud for Microsoft. The new Microsoft approach Microsoft’s gaming division is going strong, at the moment.
How a watch helped Emma write again While, at least for now, the technological advancement of the watch may have slowed down, Zhang certainly hasn’t. As if creating one potentially life-changing device wasn’t enough, in episode three of The Big Life Fix she came up with an aid for people with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Vicky Coxhead is a mother of four, two of whom have CF. Zhang, now a mum herself, quickly realised that she needed to create a solution that not only helped 16-year-old Aiden and 13-year-old Morgan cope with their condition, but also Vicky, too. “[Becoming a mother has] definitely helped me relate better to Vicky and her situation. CF is an inherited condition that causes the lungs and digestive system to become clogged with mucus, causing breathing problems and other medical issues, and raises the risk of infection. Vicky wakes up at dawn, when she starts the first of six sterilisation procedures that day to ensure her sons’ CF equipment is safe for them to use.
See where Panos Panay and his team are creating Microsoft’s next hardware innovations OnMSFT.com If B87 means nothing to you as a Microsoft fan, perhaps what’s related to it might such as the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio. Building 87 is the vault-like complex mad design scientist Panos Panay and his team work in while creating new and transformative experiences, often having to do with how hard and function intertwine in a modern productivity environment. While many fans wait for refreshed and updated versions of the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio, the team behind the hardware has opened its doors, figuratively, with a new site that looks at the various areas of B87 that have helped produce some arguably industry guiding products. At Microsoft’s Story Labs, readers can get a neat interactive (that appears to be touch-centric) walkthrough of Building 87 that includes details of The Anechoic Chamber which serves as the buildings audio lab and doubles as the world’s record holding quietest areas.
Building Bridges: How Minecraft helped a father connect with his son who has autism A safe space Since Keith has been writing about his experiences in his features at The Guardian, he has been contacted by hundreds of game developers and parents about their own experiences. There are now multiple autism-friendly Minecraft servers such as AutCraft and SafeCraft, where people with ASD can play with each other in a safe and familiar environment without fear of being bullied, picked on or insulted. The world of Minecraft – from its cartoonish, simple, blocky appearance, to it soothing music and ability to give complete control to players appears to chime with people on the autism spectrum, who can find it harder to play and integrate with ‘real life’ games. “I started playing Minecraft with Zac when he was about seven or eight – just as he was diagnosed – and it was very clear right from the beginning that it was a really positive thing for him”, Keith says. “He was really interested in it and he really understood it.
Xbox chief Phil Spencer: "Microsoft needed a reboot" Xbox boss Phil Spencer has delivered an impassioned speech on the need for inclusivity within the games industry and discussed how Microsoft's gaming division has evolved over recent years. The talk - which is embedded below and well worth a watch - also offers a frank account of Spencer's first few months in his current role as Xbox chief following the troubled launch of Xbox One. "It was obvious Microsoft needed a reboot," Spencer admitted. "Morale had hit a low, we were all massively frustrated we kept missing big trends. In some ways, it felt like real innovation was impossible. Microsoft needed a refresh on how it communicated with its customers - but also how it communicated internally, too, Spencer continued: "Everything is changing - the way we relate to each other, to our partners and even to our competitors. "Cultural transformation is hard and demanding work. "I knew I had to do more than just communicate our strategy to our customers, I had to win back our team's trust.
Microsoft’s new gaming cloud division readies for a future beyond Xbox Microsoft shipped its first video game in 1981, appropriately named Microsoft Adventure. It was an MS-DOS game that booted directly from a floppy disk, and set the stage for Microsoft’s adventures in gaming. A lot has changed over the past 37 years, and when you think of Microsoft’s efforts in gaming these days you’ll immediately think of Xbox. It’s fair to say a lot is about to change over the next few decades too, and Microsoft is getting ready. Microsoft has been building up to this move for a while. “Phil really wanted a dedicated team focused exclusively on the gaming cloud,“ says Choudhry, in an interview with The Verge. “We believe there is going to be 2 billion gamers in the world, and our goal is to reach every one of them,” explains Choudhry. A “Netflix for video games” would be an important service for any company with cloud gaming aspirations, but it’s going to be a difficult task for Microsoft on rival platforms like the PlayStation 4 or Nintendo’s Switch.
Meet the 19-year-old high school dropout leading Microsoft into a new era in video games Phil Spencer talks Microsoft's new studios and its commitment to PC gaming in 2019 Microsoft is on a video game spending spree. In the past year it’s bought six studios, including Forza Horizon studio Playground Games and Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, and founded a new one. For PC gamers, the two most striking acquisitions are Obsidian and inXile. Both are synonymous with PC gaming—Obsidian’s founders are the same developers that made classic RPGs Planescape: Torment and Fallout 2, while inXile’s CEO Brian Fargo co-designed Wasteland. The opportunity for collaboration and shared learning across our new and existing teams is potentially what’s most exciting to me. Microsoft hasn't done PC gaming well over the past decade. With that in mind, I spoke to Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s head of gaming, about how hands-on Microsoft intends to be with its new studios, whether they’ll allow more Microsoft games to release on Steam, and what Microsoft has learned from working with other studios in the past, including the acquisition and closure of Fable developer Lionhead.