How Fable Legends Took Down Lionhead

Armenius

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How Fable Legends Took Down Lionhead

Some very poignant testimony from former employees in this article. There is a choice section in here talking about Windows 10 and the Windows Store:

...But it was the Windows 10 cross-play that proved the most damaging demand, because it would greatly restrict Fable Legends’ potential audience if the game were only to be available on PC through the Windows Store. Originally, the plan was for Legends to release through Steam – but the Windows/Xbox convergence strategy put an end to that.

“When we started the project we weren’t aware of Windows 10,” says a source. “We were going to ship on Xbox One initially and then we wanted to come out on PC at a later point, most likely though Steam. But we got burnt quite badly.”

“Without Steam, without other platforms, it was just painful,” says another. “The Windows Store is a giant disaster. It’s on fire. 98% of PC copies of Rise of the Tomb Raider, a flagship Windows 10 game, were bought on Steam. The same is true for Minecraft. That hurt us, too. The store’s a mess; the number of people who couldn’t even install the game from the Microsoft store was… significant.”

Besides the technical problems with Windows 10, though, Lionhead’s bigger problem was that for the entirety of Fable Legends’ development cycle, the potential audience for the game was shrinking. Xbox One sales were falling far short of projections. Windows 10 installs, too, were nowhere near what Microsoft had planned. The scale just wasn’t there. And for a free-to-play game, scale is everything.

“Let’s be honest – we make our projections based on a series of assumptions,” reflects a former employee who worked closely with Microsoft. “There are supposed to be 2x as many Xboxes out there as there are right now. There are supposed to be 2x as many Windows 10 installs as there currently are. So now, when we look at how much money Legends could make in the free-to-play universe, you have to halve it. Because we can only reach half the audience that was projected.”
 
I expected that much as far as the Windows Store goes. This really bums me out but more-so for Remedy. I think if Quantum Break could of been released on Steam it'd of had the same reception as Alan Wake did. It sucks Microsoft is forcing this on their dev's when they know the platform is a mess. It hurts us the players, the developers and one could argue Microsoft themselves at this point they need to treat everything like they did with the Rise of the Tomb Raider release until their userbase increases and/or the platform is stable/has feature parity with the rest of the PC Platform.
 
So the only reason for Fable Legends to not appear on steam is MS-exclusive shenanigans?
 
It seems to me the title should read "how microsoft took down fable legends"
 
So the only reason for Fable Legends to not appear on steam is MS-exclusive shenanigans?

So you are basically saying that Steam is a needful for PC gaming in general?

Why is Steam in particular a needful?
 
So you are basically saying that Steam is a needful for PC gaming in general?

Why is Steam in particular a needful?
PC gaming would not be waht is currently without Steam and cheap, widely available broadband. If we stuck to dial up internet and DVD roms, we would not be where we are. Everyone would be on a console.
 
PC gaming would not be waht is currently without Steam and cheap, widely available broadband. If we stuck to dial up internet and DVD roms, we would not be where we are. Everyone would be on a console.

That is why I said Steam in particular.
There are games that succeed that aren't on Steam - there may not be many; however, they do exist.

Further, Lionhead was not going to rely on Steam, either (in case you didn't notice, Fable was originally an XBOX-ONLY title -therefore, it didn't rely on Windows, either - let alone Steam).
If anything, Lionhead could not get out of their XBOX focus - as much as they may have wanted to, you can't write a Windows game like a console game.

(Look at ALL the criticized games that have come from console developers (not merely XBOX developers); by and large they looked way TOO much like console games, and don't have the feature support that has been demanded by PC-specific gamers - for good OR ill; it could easily apply to Crysis 3 and - to an extent, even Crysis 2; how much were both accused of being console ports?)
Some of the same criticism is being aimed at Forza 6 Apex.

Basically, kiss up to us - or else.
 
So you are basically saying that Steam is a needful for PC gaming in general?

Why is Steam in particular a needful?

I picked out Steam because it is the most widespread distribution platform currently on PC as well as being explicitly mentioned in the actual article, however, I picked it as a representative.

If GoG, Origin or uPlay was bigger than Steam, then I would used that. My surprise was coming from the fact that it is MS-Exclusive (and thus not available anywhere else), not the fact that it wasn't on Steam.
 
That is why I said Steam in particular.
There are games that succeed that aren't on Steam - there may not be many; however, they do exist.

Further, Lionhead was not going to rely on Steam, either (in case you didn't notice, Fable was originally an XBOX-ONLY title -therefore, it didn't rely on Windows, either - let alone Steam).
If anything, Lionhead could not get out of their XBOX focus - as much as they may have wanted to, you can't write a Windows game like a console game.

(Look at ALL the criticized games that have come from console developers (not merely XBOX developers); by and large they looked way TOO much like console games, and don't have the feature support that has been demanded by PC-specific gamers - for good OR ill; it could easily apply to Crysis 3 and - to an extent, even Crysis 2; how much were both accused of being console ports?)
Some of the same criticism is being aimed at Forza 6 Apex.

Basically, kiss up to us - or else.

I was giving steam credit where it is due. In many instances it is a reason games are successful. You may have the game, but without proper distribution, it will never go anywhere at least not like it could have.

I still have yet to buy a game directly from M$.
 
Fable legends was never gonna be a platform mover, why they forced all the bs exclusivity on it is way beyond me
 
I just heard about this.. :/ I finally take the plunge to install a copy of windows 10 just so i can get DX12 and see if the open beta was still around and BAM The game is dead and so is the company.. This is what happens with you put all your eggs in the M$ basket instead of staying the course like when they started out. M$butthurting greed. As much as I fuck M$ you know they own our asses. With 90% of the software in the world all coded for the M$ OS.. It was a bad idea to sell the studio to M$ to begin with they should have known this would happen.
 
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From my single horror-show experience with RoTR on Windows Store, I'm not surprised one bit. It's an utterly insufferable platform with "features" you would think are designed expressly to make you hate it. Such a shame as Lionhead put out some terrific games.
 
But lets really face it: has there really ever been a 'good' Fable game?
 
I will never buy anything from the Windows Store until Microsoft makes it not suck horribly. I'm a huge fan of the Fable games, so this was all very disappointing to me. Dunno why they didn't just make Fable 4. This free to play crap is exactly the opposite of what I wanted from Fable.


But lets really face it: has there really ever been a 'good' Fable game?
I loved them all.
 
But lets really face it: has there really ever been a 'good' Fable game?

I think the first two games were pretty good. Fable 3 was too dumbed down in the controls area and its expansions were not as good. Sad as it could have been a good game. I wouldn't say it was bad, just really didn't live up to expectations(which is something fable generally had an issue with).

I will never buy anything from the Windows Store until Microsoft makes it not suck horribly. I'm a huge fan of the Fable games, so this was all very disappointing to me. Dunno why they didn't just make Fable 4. This free to play crap is exactly the opposite of what I wanted from Fable.



I loved them all.

I enjoyed the first two games and overall had a pretty good time with the third despite them trying to make suck hard(like taking away the expression wheel and not being able to have people follow you without holding your hands).

I do agree with you though, I wanted Fable 4, not some on rails kinect game bullshit. I also wasn't that interested in the legends game.

Really Fable 3 got to about the end of where I thought the games could go with the steampunk and industrial age. I think it would have been better to reboot the series and start over. They could have kept the lore and just done a better job starting in the age of heros again. Sequels could have been about pretty much the same as they were although I would prefer a better boss than the third game had.
 
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