Microsoft is discontinuing Fable Legends and considering closing Lionhead Studios

Microsoft has announced that it will stop developing Fable Legends. The company is also in talks with the employees of Lionhead Studios, the studio behind the game, about the company’s closure.

Press Play Studios in Denmark will also be closed, removing Project Knoxville from the list of releases for Xbox One. According to Microsoft, the reason for the decisions is that the company will focus more on investing and developing games and franchises that appeal most to fans. Efforts will be made to relocate affected employees within Xbox or with other developers if possible.

Lionhead is originally a British studio, founded by Peter Molyneux. The studio is responsible for, among other things, the Fable games. Fable Legends was planned to be a free-to-play game for Windows 10 and Xbox One. Project Knoxville was to be a multiplayer survival game, in which the player had to survive round after round in an arena. The game was developed by Press Play Studios, which previously released games such as Kalimba and Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. While there are still talks about the closure of Lionhead, the fate of the Danish studio has already been sealed.

Despite the closure of the two European studios, Microsoft still claims to be committed to game development communities in Europe. Xbox will also continue to support new games and new elements in existing game series. For this it mentions examples such as Quantum Break by Remedy and Sea of ​​Thieves by studio Rare, but also indie games such as Ori and the Blind Forest.