Bungie and Microsoft are parting ways. Not too long ago, Microsoft didn’t buy Bizarre Creations - another important game studio making big games for the 360. Industry analyst Michael Pachter said that Microsoft “might not have wanted to acquire the developer after its experiences with Lionhead and Rare.” This could be significant of a major change in strategy for Microsoft and how it handles first-party development. Immediate effects for Lionhead are not expected (by me, but who knows?).

Lionhead will withing the next 2-3 weeks have a new forum online, the forums are expected to be have a down time for a maximum of 48 hours while the new forums are being installed.

Here’s the official announcement from the community pet Sam.

Dear Lionhead Community,

Important and great news, some of you have been aware of this for some time or have even seen the pending changes with their own eyes, but it is now time to inform the wider community of the scheduled downtime.

Within the next 2 - 3 weeks the Lionhead forums will be taken down for a maximum of 48 hours. While we can’t give you a specific date just yet, we encourage everyone to double check that their email and password for their Lionhead Account is up-to-date! As soon as we have more information about the date and time this downtime is scheduled we will let you know, but for now, enjoy the final weeks in what we’ve all come to know as our home.

Yes - we will be moving home, with a brand new Lionhead Community site! These are pretty exciting times, stay tuned for more details.

We are aware this raises a lot of questions, but rest assured that the move will be carried out with the greatest respect for this community itself. It will be the greatest improvement to the community since 2004; when all the different forums and accounts were merged into one unified system. Now we are ready to take this to the next step!

Thanks,
The Lionhead Online & Community Team

An E3 floor manager supposedly had a chat with somebody, told them a whole bunch of stuff and it made its way onto the wii360 forums. Quite a lot of info there which, if true, means Lionhead will be at E3! (We totally posted that rumour a month ago.) This is all pretty much sourceless and unverifiable, hurray. Update ~ Xboxic say that a MS insider said it’s not true, but even he considers Lionhead showing off Fable 2 an obvious guess.

Xbox 360 and Microsoft Rumours for E3′07:

• Microsoft start first at 6.30pm GMT+0:00. (Fact)
• New Crimson Skies game to be announced.
• Bungie working on new title/series not related to anything in the Halo/Marathon Universe.
• Epic Games to show some gorm of Gears of War 2 Trailer.
• Microsoft have bought the Star Wars Battlefront 3 rights. Trailer/Demo to be shown.
• Rare to show off Banjo Kazooie 3 (Banjo-Theerie).
• Rare to announce 2 new games.
• Rare to announce Kameo 2.
• Lionhead Studios show more of Fable 2.
• Microsoft to fund a new game based on Jason Bourne. It’ll be based on the books and not the film with Matt Damon.
• Team Ninja to show off Ninja Gaiden 2. Labeled 360 Exclusive.
• Apparently there’s news of a MGS Game for the 360. May or may not be the 4th Installment.
• Dead Rising 2 to be shown. May not be ready.

From an E3 Floor Manager supposedly.

Microsoft Game Studios has just set up a branch in Reading to deal with publishing in Europe - that happens to include Lionhead! It’s headed by Phil Spencer, who’s currently general manager at MGS. Changes to what comes out of Lionhead and what we see do not seem likely, although this is probably of internal significance. Redmond, Microsoft’s HQ in Seattle on the American West Coast, is rather far away and the time difference caused some sleepless nights.

One of Microsoft’s chief bods, Chris Satchell, claims that the development studios are ecstatic that their bosses and moving closer.

We’ve had great feedback on this already - developers absolutely love the idea of having Microsoft people on the ground who can come to see them.

Here’s the press release, via Games Press: - Read on »

This is the transcript of the Peter Molyneux interview with Game Head’s Geoff Keighley, who insists he’s “hanging out” with Molyneux. Not many new things (everyone seems to ask the same questions …), but there’s a couple: Molyneux feels TM was a waste of great ideas, he says “never say never” about Dimitri and that digging “deeper” on September 23rd ‘05 for that game idea is still worthwhile. There’s also reiteration of some Fable 2 stuff, love is just part of the lineup, how Fable 2 will be great so Molyneux can stay out of Alcatraz etc.

- Read on »

Since Fable TLC was released for the PC there’s always been a lot of speculation about Fable 2 being released for the PC. It’s pretty obvious that it’s not going to be released for PC at the same time as for the XBox 360, but it might easily be released afterwards; there are some good reasons for it.

- Read on »

Much like that RPG Panel that never was, Microsoft were supposed to give a 45-minute demo of Fable 2. If it actually happened, it certainly hasn’t materialised yet.

From IGN:

On Tuesday, March 6, Microsoft’s Developer Conference Suite will feature a handful of 45-minute demos of this year’s pre-eminent role-playing games from BioWare’s Mass Effect and Lionhead’s Fable 2 to Mistwalker’s Blue Dragon.

Via Portarock.

Update: this seems to have happened, but in the form of 30-minute demos  to journalists only. The videos of this are here.

Molyneux will be sitting on a panel discussing RPGs changing in the future on Tuesday at the GDC. The talk entitled “The Evolution of RPG development” is presented by MGS and journalist Geoff Keighley will be hosting. Other panelists are Hironobu Sakaguchi (of Mystwalker) and Ray Muzyka (of Bioware), among others. It will be held tomorrow (that’s Tuesday) - more details once the GDC website stops being annoying.

Update: Check this link: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6166924.html

There’s a brand-spanking new interview with Molyneux up on Gamepro.com. They ask him a whole bunch of questions, and although he can’t reveal anything concrete about Fable 2 he says a lot about how they’re working on it, how the story in Fable 2 is getting so much more work than in Fable, how the English have most evil percentage points and how interesting Xbox Live is as a game mechanism, what you can do around that (bearing in mind that Xbox.com still has Fable 2 up as a single-player game, this could be for the secret game … ?). Interview follows after the jump.

- Read on »

Italian site Spazio Games has a huge list (Google translated - original version here), which is now also on a sister site, of games with release dates in 2007, the info apparently freshly gathered off Xbox.com.

These are the items of interest:

80. Fable 2 - by Lionhead Studios - Release given 2007 TBA (Official Situated)
176. Project “Dimitri” - by NGS/Peter Molyneux - Release given 2007/8 TBA (Further Information)
1. B.C. - by MS Games Studios (Further Information)

This should all be cautiously believed at most, but if it is true … oh my god - although of course Lionhead are only supposed to be developing two games, not three.

Stomp 224 noticed the mention of Dimitri. A genius.

On one of the sites, the disclaimer is:

We attend confirmations or refutation from part of Microsoft.