Molyneux Denies Layoff Rumors As MS Acquisition Looms

As we reported at QJ yesterday the the GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Jose was rife with talk that Lionhead Studios was about to be taken over by the ever hungry Microsoft. This has led to further conjecture regarding further layoffs at Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux has stated however that this will not be the case, given the company recently went through a period of downsizing. At the start of March the company laid off between 50 to 100 employees.

Given the only hugely successful title to come out of Lionhead in recent years has been ‘Fable’, a Microsoft published title, perhaps this is no bad thing. Though titles such as The Movies and Black and White 2 were gleefully accepted by fans of the studio as yet more work of genius, sales figures failed to capture that philosophy. Could this mean the re-emergence of titles such as ‘The Movies’ on some console format, perhaps Xbox 360? Time will tell, for now though Molyneux and the rest of the folk at Lionhead have their heads down and quite possibly their fingers well and truly crossed.
As we reported at QJ yesterday the the GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Jose was rife with talk that Lionhead Studios was about to be taken over by the ever hungry Microsoft. This has led to further conjecture regarding further layoffs at Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux has stated however that this will not be the case, given the company recently went through a period of downsizing. At the start of March the company laid off between 50 to 100 employees.

Given the only hugely successful title to come out of Lionhead in recent years has been ‘Fable’, a Microsoft published title, perhaps this is no bad thing. Though titles such as The Movies and Black and White 2 were gleefully accepted by fans of the studio as yet more work of genius, sales figures failed to capture that philosophy. Could this mean the re-emergence of titles such as ‘The Movies’ on some console format, perhaps Xbox 360? Time will tell, for now though Molyneux and the rest of the folk at Lionhead have their heads down and quite possibly their fingers well and truly crossed.