Former Forza Horizon Founder Launches Lighthouse Games, creating a "genre-defining franchise"

From GameWatcher: "Lighthouse Games, a new studio headed by Gavin Raeburn, the former Studio Head and Founder of Playground Games, the developer behind Forza Horizon, will be located in Leamington Spa, UK. The newly formed studio is currently working on an "unannounced new IP."

Although the initial press release announcing the studio's opening was brief, it mentioned that Lighthouse Games aims to develop a new best-in-class game with the help of key founding members from Playground Games' original team and other industry-leading talents."

[XiNatsuDragnel]

I'm excited to see this my friend

[Stanjara]

More studios, no games

[--Onilink--]

No games from the literally just created independent studio that has no ties with any platform?…

Well, it would be kind of strange for someone to create a new studio and magically already have a game developed…

[porkChop]

I can't wait to see it. They did incredible work with Forza Horizon so I'm sure they'll do great things with this new IP.

[Wikkid666]

He not they... It's one person

[Si-Fly]

It’s a team of over 30, several ex Playground guys and gals https://www.gamesindustry.b...

[porkChop]

I wasn't referring to one person. Read the description.

[AmUnRa]

The question is...is Lighthouse Games a first party developers of MS ore are they a new third party studio??

[sammarshall102]

They are a new 3rd party studio just like the other new studio Maverick Games from Playground devs

Which begs the question, if they really had great funding and creative freedom why would they leave Microsoft? I guess things aren't as rosy as it seems at Xbox

[porkChop]

Devs leaving to create new studios is common and not exclusive to MS. We've seen plenty of big and small exits from Naughty Dog over the years, for example, and they often go to new studios. It's normal, especially after shipping a big game.

[blackblades]

Like deviation that are a bunch of former devs from call of duty black ops and other games. Who is now working on a playstation live service game. Overall theres a lot of devs from all over that became a former dev of something

[ActualEngineer]

This comment should be downvoted more. Creative freedom can go as far as the rest of the team can and creative freedom does not translate to "I will do whatever the f I want with Microsoft's money".

[FlavorLav01]

Same reason Bungie is not at MS anymore. No creative freedom. Xbox could be the sole owner of Halo and Destiny right now but Xbox wanted to milk the chief death and succeeded with 343. This is THE biggest prime example of MS’s inability to manage development teams to their detriment.

[RedDevils]

They just want to be rich, so they start their own Business.

[FGHFGHFGH]

How about what's left of Playground Games? Isn't this the second studio made up of former playground devs? Aren't they supposed to be working on Fable? Has there been any footage shown of it? I think they should just make a new ip, and not be restricted by the past Fable games, since they weren't that great anyways.