Lionhead Studios is now an online-focused developer, according to head of studio John Needham.
Needham, who joined the studio earlier this year from Star Trek Online and City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios, said "every game" in future will have "connected" elements.
"Our vision is to connect players with fantastic games, so every game we do from hear on out will have great connected online layers," he told Digital Spy at gamescom.
"We're online game guys, that's the studio. We love online games, we love interaction with real people, and we want to bring that magic to Fable."
Discussing the origin of Fable Legends, Needham said he wanted to extend the franchise's trademark interaction with characters and NPCs to real people.
"The thing we thought a lot about was [when making Fable Legends], part of what makes Fable special is the interaction with the characters and the NPCs," he said.
An independent UK developer says it’s been forced to announce and postpone its game on the same day, and lay off more than half of its staff, due to the sharp downturn in investment in the games industry.
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After Microsoft disbanded Lionhead studios, many of the developers moved onto new projects - Deadbeat Heroes was one of them.
Lionhead, as much as I like the Fable series, do something new already.
Well, they just lost a customer.
Here's the thing.
Half of Lionhead left years ago to form a little studio called Media Molecule.
I'm not saying the talent is gone. Fable: Legends looks pretty fun. I'm just saying MOST of the talent is gone. We may never see them make a game as fun as Fable 1 or either Black & White again. :/
I would love to see a Fable game with a strong online component and evolving worlds thanks to the cloud. That would be awesome.
I am fine with the "online" direction for Lionhead but more importantly I would like to see Lionhead come out with a new IP that they could do some rotation with Fable on ... every other year type stuff so Fable doesn't become even more saturated than it is. I love the Fable world but I do want to see it get some time off and allow gamers to grow hungry for it again.