Microsoft kills Fable Legends and Lionhead Studios
WOW! This is some crazy news. Especially for a company currently doing some big acquisitions. I'm not sure what the real reason(s) could be, but I disagree with the decision.
Fable Legends sounded like it was quite far along and was an attempt at a new revenue model. Perhaps that revenue model was what killed it. But that still wouldn't explain closing the studio as well. Honestly, if I had to venture a guess I would think this is just a weakness in Nadella's thinking/strategy. He generally seems quite competent, but at the same time I don't really see him as someone who understands games or gaming.
Fable was a major franchise in the Xbox universe. Maybe not as big as Halo, but few things are. I feel like this was a massively premature decision. Especially, as I said, so far along in the dev process. It seems like they could have afforded to keep dev going long enough now to see how the title plays out.
But, killing a game and/or a studio alone isn't enough for me to feel like this was bad move. It is how the decision impacts how people view the company and the platform on the whole. After debacles like Silverlight and IE and products like Kin this is another nail in the coffin of the confidence in Microsoft. I would think twice about selling my company to them as another business. It reinforces fears about Microsoft's commitments to developers and it brings into question the longevity of anything they might deliver as a consumer.
One simple decision and it could end up hurting how everyone feels about them all over again. They were just getting their name out of the social mud. The timing, the size of it and everything and now I'm concerned. I've generally seen some sense in Microsoft's plans. Even plans that saw things killed off. This is the first time they have killed off such a nearly complete product so thoroughly. They must have already invested millions into this title. And to be willing to kill it without ever letting it see the light of day... that is scary. What else are they willing to kill on such short notice?
Personally, I wasn't going to buy another Windows Phone based device (hoping they would shortly unveil an x86 based phone). But now, even if my phone dies prematurely I won't. I simply can't trust that they will support an extraneous platform for any reasonable length of time now.
If there is a good reason here, Microsoft would have been smarter to be more forthcoming about it.
I guess that is all I needed to say.
Fable Legends sounded like it was quite far along and was an attempt at a new revenue model. Perhaps that revenue model was what killed it. But that still wouldn't explain closing the studio as well. Honestly, if I had to venture a guess I would think this is just a weakness in Nadella's thinking/strategy. He generally seems quite competent, but at the same time I don't really see him as someone who understands games or gaming.
Fable was a major franchise in the Xbox universe. Maybe not as big as Halo, but few things are. I feel like this was a massively premature decision. Especially, as I said, so far along in the dev process. It seems like they could have afforded to keep dev going long enough now to see how the title plays out.
But, killing a game and/or a studio alone isn't enough for me to feel like this was bad move. It is how the decision impacts how people view the company and the platform on the whole. After debacles like Silverlight and IE and products like Kin this is another nail in the coffin of the confidence in Microsoft. I would think twice about selling my company to them as another business. It reinforces fears about Microsoft's commitments to developers and it brings into question the longevity of anything they might deliver as a consumer.
One simple decision and it could end up hurting how everyone feels about them all over again. They were just getting their name out of the social mud. The timing, the size of it and everything and now I'm concerned. I've generally seen some sense in Microsoft's plans. Even plans that saw things killed off. This is the first time they have killed off such a nearly complete product so thoroughly. They must have already invested millions into this title. And to be willing to kill it without ever letting it see the light of day... that is scary. What else are they willing to kill on such short notice?
Personally, I wasn't going to buy another Windows Phone based device (hoping they would shortly unveil an x86 based phone). But now, even if my phone dies prematurely I won't. I simply can't trust that they will support an extraneous platform for any reasonable length of time now.
If there is a good reason here, Microsoft would have been smarter to be more forthcoming about it.
I guess that is all I needed to say.
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