Microsoft Game Studios CANCELS Games & CLOSES Studios

I love fable TLC and fable 2 though =(

So how many other viewers re-watched the intro for Meg's oblivious face?

As far as UWP goes, I get what Microsoft are trying to do, but to my mind, the biggest issue they face isn't that the platform doesn't work (what platform ever has this early on?) or that developers are struggling to accommodate it (again, it's early doors, and there's nothing stopping MS making it easier to develop for); it's that Steam is already ubiquitous. How many developers are going to bother making two versions of their game when the precious few they might sell on the M$ platform vs. the vast majority they sell through Steam will in no way make up for the extra development cost?

And as for developers making exclusives: MS are going to have to front some serious cash to convince a developer to go with UWP, and take a significant hit by abandoning Steam.

It may be that MS are planning to still allow their games to be sold through Steam, but with the need to run them through UWP, like Ubisoft and Uplay (ala Trials Fusion), but given the backlash Ubisoft received over that (and the fact that Uplay breaks games), it wouldn't be a particularly wise business move on the part of MS or the developers in question.

If (and right now it is still an emboldened 'if') UWP works exactly as everyone fears, then MS are going to find themselves lacking in developers willing to work with them at all (and will inevitably start back-tracking quicker than they did with the Xbone).

I was in the closed beta and the game really beautiful and fun to play. It was really close to being done.

I just wish we could have played one more Fable epic with the graphics from fable legends! It's a real shame rip lionhead.

"Developers will have to make a tough choice to decide where to develop their game for."

Hmm, option A) develop for known quantities with fairly 'safe' profit margins, like Steam, or option B) develop for the closed system that is almost assuredly going to tank due to turning off potential customers in droves, a la GFWL.

That's not a tough choice at all.

I can appreciate what Microsoft is doing. People will always hate change and new things immediately when it comes to technology, so you have to push forward. But you can't force a major architecture change like UWP when a project is that far into development. You have to get something like that in the beginning or have a different version later released. Like how GTA V did with PC. Sure it was a long wait, but it was worth it.

If UWP was a cause for these issues, i'm guessing it's more because UWP came out after the majority of the games core development was done. UWP essentially released with windows 10 (7/29/2015). The games code development would have probably been very far along at that time and was probably built specifically against an Xbox SDK not the UWP SDK. If you're building a multi platform application/game you have to take that into account very early on in development. MS just bought Xamarin for their cross platform development tools on the mobile front.

Be interesting to see what happens here... and it also explains why they (almost) forced people onto Windows 10... this was predicted before it happened when MS said Windows 10 is free - lots of commentators said the main reason to do this was to do what they did with MS Office - you give something for free which locks you into a system that you then have to pay through the nose for...

Lucky I don't care since I run Linux and don't run Vine (Windows emulation on Linux) - which will probably cease to work with UWP since stopping Vine from working is probably a project goal of UWP.

Also though I should mention that this is gonna potentially be a problem for Mojang and Minecraft... they already build for an insane number of platforms and MS claimed they wouldn't cause them trouble but UWP does exactly that... it means they will have another platform to support or (alternatively - and more likely) Microsoft will force them to ditch the old PC version (and support for Linux and Mac, plus compatibility with Steam and the like) and only release UWP versions... though it'll take a few years since MS won't want to leave quite so many people behind on its old Windows versions quite yet and to F* with Minecraft will cause a sh*tstorm when it happens... but it will happen... or they just close Mojang... that is also possible. And the people who said you couldn't trust Microsoft buying Minecraft when it was sold will have been right - not that there's anything they could have done abut it except help code one of the Open Source versions that exist... pity none of them have mod support for Minecraft mods yet... would make a huge difference!

Here's to Microsoft being the same old d*cks as they ever were from founder onwards (you know Bill Gates appropriated MS DOS (precursor to Windows OS), right?) - plus ca change, plus c'est le meme

the lose of lionhead isnt that much, fable became shit when they didnt make a second part to fable2 which could have easily done an assassins creed2 thing and done several titles for that character, and they really only did fable instead of caring about their other titles. fable3 was buggy and broke and it was just bad, fable anniversary was buggy and broke quite often to where the original game ran better and looked better.

The quality of all of Microsoft's products have disappointed me for quite some time now, I'd wager their monopoly allowed the company to get complacent and lower their development and engineering standards. Seems to me like they're trying to re-affirm their monopoly with Windows 10 and now the UWP platform. Just business as usual for them.

UWPs can be sold and distributed anywhere. Other types of packages can be distributed via Windows Store.
Sweeney has already clarified that he doesn't know how UWP works (also, I guess walled gardens are only a problem when he makes them up for Microsoft, not when he's on stage praising Apple for thiers).
A substantial benefit with these new packages are that they can be installed and uninstalled without leaving a tangled mess behind. They are installed as a single package, in a single folder, and that single package can be removed without leaving files all over the place.