As far as you know, anyway.

Lionhead has updated their website to a subtle yellow-on-black, gradient heavy design on a gorgeous background art piece.

It also includes a Tales of Albion section, which requires Microsoft’s flash-competitor Silverlight to run; however you can read content right here without Silverlight (I guess someone forgot to remove those This is Sparta!s before publishing).

The old content still appears to be there in its entirety, including the never-updated © 2006 Microsoft Corporation (you guys, I think <%=Year(Date)%> echoes the current year).

From Lionhead:

Last week we had some visitors in our offices; two big groups of European jounralists got to see Fable 2 up-close and personal. They’ll be publishing their findings in the upcoming days including the 7 new screenshots which can already be found here.

And here are some of the previews we found already, we’ll keep the list updated as the day goes on. Even if you can’t understand what they’re saying, some of the previews are worth having a look at just for the pictures or the video:
http://www.xboxlife.dk/sneak/57/Fable2.html (Danish)
http://www.gry-online.pl/S013.asp?ID=40918 (Polish)
http://plaza.fi/edome/artikkelit/pelit/fable-2… (Finish)
http://www.gameswelt.de/articles/previews/4949-Fable_2/index.html (German)
http://www.9lives.be/gamenieuws/110828/interview (Dutch) + VIDEO
http://www.fz.se/artiklar/20080513/fable-2/ (Swedish) + PICTURES
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=188692 (English)

Briefly: the release date is now shifted to “this holiday”, it’ll be much bigger, Molyneux loves GTA IV, it’ll be cool and stuff, 5000 bugs and content complete either tomorrow or in a week. Also mo’ images? We do not know.

The Guardian has another article on the games industry. It has quotes by Molyneux and “additional reporting” by Kieron Gillen.

The vast majority of industries – and especially creative industries – have crunch times. We always worry about our work/life balance, but if a game takes three years to make, and someone turns around and says that the last three months are going to be hard, solid work, I don’t think it’s different from making a film or a TV programme or even writing a book.

Saying that, we are striving so people have the right work/life balance. This industry has changed unrecognisably in how we make games. I think she [Hoffman] was right – this industry was bad at pushing people very very hard for far too long … but I think that’s changing now.

In this month’s Develop Magazine there is an “IP Profile” of Black & White, although it reads more like an essay about Lionhead pre-2006. (We have some alleged “images” which may or may not come from the alleged “article”.) The interesting numbers are:

• Black & White and Creature Isle sold 2 million copies put together
• B&W2 sold “a fraction” of that, so perhaps a few hundred thousand
• Fable sold 1.5 million in its first month and 3 million overall

The webcams page now has all four lionhead webcams at once. That is all.

The forums are down. Official sources declined to comment. Secret contacts have leaked internal emails to us implying forums will return in a month starting with a J.

The magazine 360 interview Lionhead and a few other British game studios. Via Develop. Part 2 is here.

How are UK developers placed in the competitive world of the games industry?

Peter Molyneux: The merger of Activision/Vivendi, and the continual shrinking of the development pool with companies like BioWare/Pandemic, Travellers’ Tales and Bizarre Creations all being snapped up (and if the rumours are true a few more announcements to come) mean the landscape of developers is changing more rapidly than ever before. UK developers need to increase their ability to be competitive and there is a lot of talk about developers in Canada and the Far East who are treated far more sympathetically by their governments in terms of subsidies and tax breaks. Where British developers can still compete is in terms of originality and innovation.

Is there any concern that cheaper production costs abroad will push publishers away from the UK? What can British developers do to make sure they offer more than just cost effectiveness?

What can British developers do to make sure they offer more than just cost effectiveness? I kind of answered this above but we can’t compete on production cost so we have to compete on quality and what UK developers are good at is uniqueness and our ability to solve design problems – UK developers still have a lot to offer.

- Read on »

Latest stories suggest there’s chaos at the old Loinhead website. Our Senior Correspondent is now at the old Loinhead website; Orcid, can you tell us what’s going on there?

fel, there’s chaos!

As announced on the Lionhead blog, Lionhead are donating a bunch of mostly Fable 2-related stuff to be auctioned away at a fancy dinner for Child’s Play, the charity from Penny Arcade that gives toys to sickly kids in hospitals. Notably, to be auctioned off is some signed underwear (signed, of course, by Peter), having your name in Fable 2 and some Fable/Fable 2 t-shirts and posters.