Lionhead Studios Set for Layoffs

Lionhead Studios, as with many companies in the game industry, is trying to weather stormy game sales and realign to strengthen business. Activision planned to produce game console versions of the title, “The Movies,” but later cancelled the titles due to the poor sales of the PC edition of the game. Lionhead Studios was to be the developer. According to The Movies Planet, a source indicated that Lionhead Studios was planning to downsize their studios. “We understand that Lionhead have had a company meeting today, where the decision was taken to downsize the company from 3 studios to just the 2, which means the loss of approx 100 people. We assume this is due to the poor sales figures of both The Movies and Black & White 2. The company will head straight into a consultation period, which basically means that current employees will have to apply and be interviewed for all available jobs.” Lionhead Studio,s forum said, "Over the last few months Lionhead has been working on plans for a new AAA world class game. As work on a number of its titles draws to a close, a pool of 100 super talented developers at Lionhead are available to create a new super team at Lionhead. This will be in addition to an existing team which is working on an amazing next generation title. This strategy was presented to Lionhead this morning in a company meeting but sadly it will mean some redundancies.” Stating that there will be “some redundancies” is corporate-speak for layoffs. Lionhead said that they will continue to support “The Movies” and provide new download material for the PC title. The situation that Lionhead Studios finds itself in is endemic of what many game companies are experiencing; the gaming public is more selective of the titles they buy, and as a result, games which are not hits, quickly fall by the wayside. But while the game industry is reeling from poor sales figures, it might be the one thing that may wake the game developers from an apparent slumber of complacency and into a mode of fresh ideas for video games.