Earlier this week Lionhead Studios claimed they had an important announcement following on from the Microsoft conference at E3, many believing it was the new rumoured game they had been working on. Instead both Microsoft and Lionhead made the surprise announcement not about a new game, but the promotion of Peter Molyneux former boss and game designer for the company to the Creative Director of European studios at Microsoft.
He will continue to oversee development of games at Lionhead but will also have more input across studios such as Rare, to help designers realize their creative visions.
"What you"re not going to see is ten Peter Molyneux games. The value of this role is for someone like myself going in and making those little tiny lights of an idea shine as brightly as possible and ensuring everybody within the organization clearly understands why we"re making those titles, the purpose of those titles and their importance to Microsoft overall.
All I"m going to be doing is making sure those lights are as bright as possible. People at Rare and other European studios are super, super bright and creative people and I"ll learn as much about design from them as they would from me."
The news follows as Molyneux gave a brief look at the power and ideas behind Project Natal at Microsoft"s E3 conference with Lionhead"s creation "Milo". There is still no word on what either Rare or Lionhead are working on, however Rare are intimately involved with Project Natal according to Xbox boss Shane Kim.
"Rare is intimately involved with Project Natal in a number of different dimensions. They"re doing an awful lot of work, even outside the traditional game space, I would say. Unfortunately I can"t go into a lot of detail about that. Rare is alive and well and really having a broader impact on the entire Xbox world than just doing the games they traditionally have in the past."