Loinhead

… would be a doom-mongering and inappropriate headline. From the blog:

You should see our servers a bit as the average pensioner; old, dusty, it’s going downhill and the inevitable will happen at some point. Because the TMO servers are running on their last legs we wanted to strongly recommend everyone – in case you haven’t got a local copy anymore – to back up their online movies. We don’t want you to lose any of your films in case the poop hits the fan.

Clearly there are some people inside Lionhead who are worried about the state of the servers. It’s reasonable to assume that everyone inside LH knows about this. By the tone of the post, it seems that nothing is being done from the top: servers patched up, things work again, but no money or manpower invested into fixing the real problem that puts the data at risk. Lionhead being as caring as they usually are, that could mean MS doesn’t want them to work on TMO when Fable 2 is imminent.

[Extra paranoid interpretation: plug on servers is about to be pulled, LH not allowed to disclose it, advises backups.]

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?).