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Lionhead Studios is a United Kingdom-based computer game development company led by industry veteran Peter Molyneux, and acquired by Microsoft Game Studios in April 2006.

Lionhead started as a breakaway from the developer Bullfrog, which was also founded by Molyneux, Lionhead's first game was Black & White, a god game with elements of artificial life, strategy, and beat 'em up games. Black & White was published by Electronic Arts in 2001. Lionhead Studios is named after the (now deceased) hamster of Mark Webley. After selecting the name, the hamster then died.

Black and White was followed up with the release of an expansion pack named "Black & White: Creature Isle." Lionhead then released the popular (and controversial) Fable, from satellite developer Big Blue Box. In 2005, Lionhead released The Movies and Black & White 2. On 6 April 2006, it was announced that Lionhead Studios was to be purchased by Microsoft to further bolster their range of Xbox 360 games.

Corporate Structure

For a period of three years, Lionhead set up a network of "satellite" developers, including Big Blue Box Studios (developers of Fable), Intrepid Games (developers of B.C., since suspended due to a massive overrun) and Black & White Studios (who have taken responsibility for the continuation of the Black & White series). Lionhead proper was working on three games, Fable, B&W2 and The Movies, potentially including Dimitri.

The "satellite" system has ceased to exist in any meaningful form since mid-2004, however, with Big Blue Box having been more or less integrated into the main company, and Intrepid essentially having been disbanded.

Lionhead was a privately held company until October 2004 (shortly before the suspension of BC) when a consortium of investors, including Ingenious Ventures, IDG VE and technology firm Add Partners, made a significant investment into the developer. This at a time when the company was in severe financial straits, as they had over-run development on two projects, Black & White 2 and Fable, and also canceled B.C. and a project with Jeff Minter named Unity.

However, since September 2005 Lionhead have successfully released two titles, Black & White 2 and The Movies, as well as an updated version of Fable (entitled Fable: The Lost Chapters). To date, these titles have not achieved a massive impact in sales, and this left the company vulnerable to a takeover bid. They have since started developing Fable 2 and an unknown game, for which only subtle hints have been dropped, which may have been a continuation of Dimitri.

In April 2006 Lionhead Studios was acquired by Microsoft, signalling the end of independent development, and a focus on Microsoft's proprietary gaming platforms. Lionhead will be a fairly independent part of Microsoft Game Studios, which has also acquired Rare Ltd. and Bungie Studios.

Delays

Lionhead has received a lot of media attention for their delayed games, in part due to the large amount of publicity and hype generated for their games. Various reports on this indicate a company tendency to re-design games mid-development and a tendency toward over-ambition, though few reports are official. The company is always on the cutting edge of developing new technology, especially in the area of NPC AI, which adds considerably to their development schedules. Peter Molyneux, who often refers to himself as either the lead designer or creative director of Lionhead, often promises specific release dates early on in the development of his titles. This causes particular problems and disappointment among fans as many release dates are pushed back, sometimes more than once. Black & White missed several deadlines until it was finally released in 2001. A similar problem occurred with the release of The Movies which was intended for a 2004 release date but was eventually delayed to 2005.

Critical Reception

Lionhead have also acquired a love-hate relationship with its audience and the media. While game reviewers tend to be pre-disposed to giving their games high scores, fan communities tend to accuse the company's games of being all idea and no depth. Fable is the key example of this. Numerous magazines and online sources hailed the game, while other gamers looked at it with disappointment . While the game had many innovative concepts contained within it, such as a morpheable player character, a morality system and the ability to interact with townsfolk, get married etc, a common reaction among players was to feel that none of these concepts really affected each other or added up to a complete game; that, or various concepts were already used in other games.

Fable was actually considered very good by video game critics, even in light of its 'missing features'. Peter Molyneux had extensively promised many elaborate features throughout the games development, many of which were scrapped or canned early in production. A prevalent example of this is the 'Growing of trees' in the course of the game, which were removed for practical performance reasons

Black & White 2 has often been criticized as missing the mark . It is also somewhat an 'oddity' compared to all other Lionhead games; it sustained massive hype, received negative critical feedback and also performed poorly in sales

The Movies has proved popular with very positive reviews. It suffered from poor commercial performance however, along with Black & White 2.

Games

Released

• Black & White (2001)
• Fable (2004)
• Fable: The Lost Chapters (2005)
• Black & White 2 (2005)
• The Movies (2005)
• Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods (2006)
• The Movies: Stunts & Effects (2006)

In development

• Fable 2
• Unknown Project - possibly Dimitri
• Unknown Project - Project X

Suspended

• B.C.

Cancelled

• Unity
• Black & White: Titan (Xbox, PlayStation 2)
• Black & White (PlayStation, Dreamcast)
• The Movies (Gamecube, Xbox, Playstation 2) (may be released, not by Activision)

External links

• Lionhead Studios
• Official Lionhead news site
• About Lionhead
• Lionhead Studios profile on MobyGames

• British video game companies
• First-party developers
• Video game developers