ryudo2053
New member
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 182
Why aren’t we going to see B&W3 in the forseeable future? There’s a simple reason.
Molyneux doesn’t want to.
Molyneux: Lionhead needs to focus on two big, big titles, rather than on three titles and a number of smaller distractions. What that actually means is we’re taking the people from The Movies studio and the Black & White studio and using those talented people to create a totally new studio to work on a totally new next generation concept that been mulled over by designers over the last few months.
It makes sense for Lionhead. The games have always benefitted from Molyneux’s Magical Touch - he worked more closely on B&W and Fable than on B&W2 and The Movies - and clearly one of two games will get more of that than two of three. It’ll presumably also mean that the whole company is more focused on what they’re doing right now.
We know one of them is Fable 2, probably because it was so successful, Microsoft will like it and they enjoyed working on it, but why can’t the other game development ’slot’ be B&W3 (or even a TM2?)?.
It’s not the money.
Molyneux: This isn’t a financial decision. I’ve said that to everyone here this is not about how much money we’ve got in the bank. We’ve got enough . It’s forced by the fact that we want to kick off a new project in the right way.
Of course, I wish all my games had sold to every person in the planet, but that’s not the reality. But we’ve got hundreds and thousands of royalties coming from Black&White 2, and the Movies is still selling steadily. I’m hopeful it will be like Theme Park where the best sales are yet to come, especially with some more promotion. Fable Lost Chapters has done exceptionally well over in the States too.
That’s quite surprising: contrary to what many armchair analysts think, B&W2 seems to be selling alright - sounds like it’s selling better than The Movies, even. But with the million-a-month statistic thrown in, it will take a lot of royalties just to break even …
Nevertheless, it appears that Lionhead was making money at this point (March), or had perhaps found some more investment (such as the Ingenious company specialising in underwriting game development, and various other VCs such as those signed on in Summer ‘04 - note that MS probably settled all such debts when it bought Lionhead), and that the cashflow wasn’t too bad. Knowing how well B&W sold (more than 2 million units, which is very respectable!), Molyneux probably wouldn’t have attributed whatever success B&W2 had to the format of the series, either.
Obviously it’s hard to tell without seeing the company spreadsheet, but it really doesn’t look like the decision was made over a column or two of red figures.
Molyneux (and the developers) just didn’t want to.
Sam, the community pet, has said it, too: the developers wanted to work on something different. The core team from B&W Studios that did B&W will probably have worked on B&W2, too, and there must be a point where motivation just drops.
Besides, Molyneux has another Intellectual Property lined up, and it’s probably all exiting and shiny.
They’ve started development now, and they’re not going to switch.
Their decision, right or wrong, would take more to shift than three elephants on a rather tiny rollerskate. And it’s going to be difficult telling Microsoft about it. Molyneux does answer to Phil Spence now, manager at Microsoft Game Studios, and no matter how casual their relationship is, one way or another MGS will probably not be too keen on the faffing around. Lionhead’ve been given quite a loose leash, but they need to be careful and they need to get results within a game development cycle or possibly two.
At least until Fable 2 and the Secret Game are released, Lionhead will not be working on B&W3, or TM2 for that matter. How far in the future will that be? 3, maybe 4 years. What’re the chances then? Again, probably not that good.
Molyneux spoke about this in an interview about job cuts in March, with Next Generation.
Source: Loinhead.com (It IS Loinhead.com xD)
Molyneux doesn’t want to.
Molyneux: Lionhead needs to focus on two big, big titles, rather than on three titles and a number of smaller distractions. What that actually means is we’re taking the people from The Movies studio and the Black & White studio and using those talented people to create a totally new studio to work on a totally new next generation concept that been mulled over by designers over the last few months.
It makes sense for Lionhead. The games have always benefitted from Molyneux’s Magical Touch - he worked more closely on B&W and Fable than on B&W2 and The Movies - and clearly one of two games will get more of that than two of three. It’ll presumably also mean that the whole company is more focused on what they’re doing right now.
We know one of them is Fable 2, probably because it was so successful, Microsoft will like it and they enjoyed working on it, but why can’t the other game development ’slot’ be B&W3 (or even a TM2?)?.
It’s not the money.
Molyneux: This isn’t a financial decision. I’ve said that to everyone here this is not about how much money we’ve got in the bank. We’ve got enough . It’s forced by the fact that we want to kick off a new project in the right way.
Of course, I wish all my games had sold to every person in the planet, but that’s not the reality. But we’ve got hundreds and thousands of royalties coming from Black&White 2, and the Movies is still selling steadily. I’m hopeful it will be like Theme Park where the best sales are yet to come, especially with some more promotion. Fable Lost Chapters has done exceptionally well over in the States too.
That’s quite surprising: contrary to what many armchair analysts think, B&W2 seems to be selling alright - sounds like it’s selling better than The Movies, even. But with the million-a-month statistic thrown in, it will take a lot of royalties just to break even …
Nevertheless, it appears that Lionhead was making money at this point (March), or had perhaps found some more investment (such as the Ingenious company specialising in underwriting game development, and various other VCs such as those signed on in Summer ‘04 - note that MS probably settled all such debts when it bought Lionhead), and that the cashflow wasn’t too bad. Knowing how well B&W sold (more than 2 million units, which is very respectable!), Molyneux probably wouldn’t have attributed whatever success B&W2 had to the format of the series, either.
Obviously it’s hard to tell without seeing the company spreadsheet, but it really doesn’t look like the decision was made over a column or two of red figures.
Molyneux (and the developers) just didn’t want to.
Sam, the community pet, has said it, too: the developers wanted to work on something different. The core team from B&W Studios that did B&W will probably have worked on B&W2, too, and there must be a point where motivation just drops.
Besides, Molyneux has another Intellectual Property lined up, and it’s probably all exiting and shiny.
They’ve started development now, and they’re not going to switch.
Their decision, right or wrong, would take more to shift than three elephants on a rather tiny rollerskate. And it’s going to be difficult telling Microsoft about it. Molyneux does answer to Phil Spence now, manager at Microsoft Game Studios, and no matter how casual their relationship is, one way or another MGS will probably not be too keen on the faffing around. Lionhead’ve been given quite a loose leash, but they need to be careful and they need to get results within a game development cycle or possibly two.
At least until Fable 2 and the Secret Game are released, Lionhead will not be working on B&W3, or TM2 for that matter. How far in the future will that be? 3, maybe 4 years. What’re the chances then? Again, probably not that good.
Molyneux spoke about this in an interview about job cuts in March, with Next Generation.
Source: Loinhead.com (It IS Loinhead.com xD)