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

Mortalitis_Infinitas has written an article about dimitri and if really still is in development or if the secret game that lionhead are working on is a whole new game that they haven’t talked about yet.

I think I’ve found something rather…intriguing, to say the least…

We’ve all heard about Dimitri, and we’ve all heard that Lionhead is currently working on two games right now. And yes, we’ve all crossed our fingers that this second title might be Dimitri. Well, by way of a hint in a video diary (check them all out here), I think I’ve found a rather substantial piece of the puzzle. It’s looking more and more like Lionhead is indeed working on Dimitri (Please keep in mind, however, this is mere speculation from a fan. As always, don’t believe it until Lionhead confirms it.)

But first, to get those who aren’t familiar with the project up to speed. Dimitri was first heard of in May, 2001 when Peter mentioned it at that year’s E3. But nothing too official has been mentioned since then.

Read the rest of this fine piece of information here.

Canaljuegos got an interview with Molyneux around the time of the 10-year anniversary and has published it just now. I’m unsure how much clearer Molyneux could be about online stuff without actually announcing it; the Secret Game has still not turned into Dimitri or BC and, he says, Microsoft is awesome. Worth reading.

- Read on »

Develop Magazine’s 71st issue is free for download for a possibly limited time! It usually costs £4 / €7 / $13, so hurry while downloadable stocks last. An email address is required to download it.

This one’s got an interview with Molyneux in it, all about how being bought by Microsoft changed Lionhead as a company. There’s some rather interesting things there, a fair bit on the management structure, there’s a Central Technology Group for playing around with technology like vision recognition for both games (Molyneux refers to the Secret Game as Project X) and how they’re developing a framework to build games with LUA and C#. Quoted below.

- 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 »

Some guy from Gamehead talked briefly to Molyneux, again trying to get out of him what the secret game’s about. No luck, of course - apart from confirming it’s (shock horror) not based on bisexuality day (our best clue so far is that it’s on based on September 23rd ‘05. More analysis here).

Watch it here.

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.

The excerpts of Interviews with Peter Molyneux that have previously been quoted here on Loinhead.net gave us a couple of intriguing hints about the new, “Secret Game”, the concept for the next big title from Lionhead (alongside Fable 2) that they’ve been kicking around the office.

What do we know about this game? Probably only what he has said (almost nothing), which is mostly concentrated on this website. - Read on »

Sam, the Community Pet, nicknamed the Secret Game “The Experiment”. It’s either a rather risky game concept, which seems unlikely considering B&W2s losses and TM’s less than inspiring success, or it involves experiments performed by evil Nazis. In copious quantities.
Sounds more than ominous, and strangely reminiscent of The Room.

An excerpt from a CVG interview with Molyneux by Andy Robinson, 3rd November 2006.

What can you tell us about your second project?

Molyneux: Obviously there’s nothing I can say about the second game - the only thing is that bits of that second game have been experimented with at Lionhead for many years. I don’t think it’s what you expect from Lionhead but that’s what I love doing - I love doing the unexpected.

If you were to go back and piece together all the bits that I’ve been talking about over the years, there’s a lot of that in it. That’s all I can say really.

How would you sum it up in a few words?

Molyneux: Well there’s very little I can say about the second title other than there’s lots of thought being put into it. Anything I say is either going to get me into trouble or be meaningless.

Is it the same as Project Dimitri then?

Molyneux: Again, there’s nothing I can say - I can’t confirm or deny that. I think we would’ve been stupid to throw everything away, wouldn’t we? And I never said really much about Project Dimitri but some of the interesting things are certainly there.

Actually quite a fair bit was said about Dimitri. It was going to feature ultra-high realism (cloth getting ragged on chairs after use, and such) and let you relive your childhood since about age 8.

Well, oaky, that’s not much.

The Room is definitely one of the loose ends Molyneux’s talked about these last few years, and that was basically all about making an amazing sandbox-style real-world simulation, where you could make things from clay and the object recognition would turn it into the real-world object you were (hopefully) trying to model. Coupled with a few surreal elements, like mirrors you could step into or throw things through and have them come back altered - bigger or smaller, say - it was really fascinating but all we ever saw was videos. It’s not really clear what that could mean for the new game, though. Surrealism?