Microsoft about to buy Lionhead Studios

Various rumors at GDC point at a highly possible sale of UK developer Lionhead to Microsoft. According to gamesindustry.biz, the companies are in the negotiation process. The deal could be announced in the coming days.

Other possible buyers, among them Ubisoft and EA, seem to be out of the question now.

After poor sales of Lionhead’s latest games – The Movies (the Xbox version having already been shelved because of this) and Black & White 2, the company underwent restructuring a while ago, reducing it’s game output to 2 titles. As a consequence, 50 people had to leave the company.

There’s no doubt that if Microsoft should secure this deal, Lionhead will at least be partially shifting focus to development of X360 games, and/or titles already in development being ported to the platform.

Various rumors at GDC point at a highly possible sale of UK developer Lionhead to Microsoft. According to gamesindustry.biz, the companies are in the negotiation process. The deal could be announced in the coming days.

Other possible buyers, among them Ubisoft and EA, seem to be out of the question now.

After poor sales of Lionhead’s latest games – The Movies (the Xbox version having already been shelved because of this) and Black & White 2, the company underwent restructuring a while ago, reducing it’s game output to 2 titles. As a consequence, 50 people had to leave the company.

There’s no doubt that if Microsoft should secure this deal, Lionhead will at least be partially shifting focus to development of X360 games, and/or titles already in development being ported to the platform.