The project involves a ”robust and highly scalable cloud service that is central” to the game. Phil Spencer says they’re ”starting to look at bigger and core gamer things” for PC.
It’s unknown if this bid to return to PC gaming by Microsoft Studios would be exclusive to Windows 8 or whether that’s just their flagship platform for it.
Recently Phil Spencer of Microsoft Game Studios said they’ve got ”more individual projects on Windows than we’ve had in ten years at Microsoft Studios,” meaning any number after zero it feels like. The corporate giant has been exploring its back catalogue of IPs as well as free-to-play.
When Microsoft brought Halo 2 to PC they released it as a Windows Vista exclusive, which naturally caused some outrage among the desktop gamer community. Hopefully Microsoft has learnt from their past folly. They got a lot to make up for with the utter failure that Games for Windows Live proved to be, and which still casts a shadow today.
This PC project could be hinting at Lionhead’s Fable Legends coming to Windows, which is due to release in 2014 episodically for Xbox One - it certainly fits the cloud service jigsaw.
While Microsoft Studios may be working on a ‘beloved franchise’ it’s most certainly not for a ‘beloved Windows 8’.
