Fable 2 episodic experiment deemed 'massively successful' by Molyneux

by Christopher Grant on Mar 13th 2010 1:00PM

At the tail end of our GDC interview with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, we remembered one more question we simply had to know: How well did Fable 2's episodic experiment go? We'll refresh your memory: Last August, Molyneux announced plans to release Fable 2 as a series of five downloadable "episodes," with the first one given away and the subsequent four priced at $10 each.

Molyneux's response: "That was hugely successful. There were something like over half a million. I think it was 600,000 downloads of the first episode, which was very, very cool." Of course, the first episode was free so how was the conversion rate? "It was a much higher than a normal conversion rate," Molyneux smiled. "Massively, massively successful, and I really love this relationship, which is much more sliced into episodes with consumers."

Of course, knowing where we were going with this particular line of questioning, Molyneux preemptively offered an answer."But we're not announcing whether that's coming out in this release," he said, tossing a smile towards the attentive PR people behind me.

Tags: Action, Fable-2, GDC, GDC-2010, Lionhead, Lionhead-Studios, MGS, Microsoft, Microsoft-Game-Studios, Peter-Molyneux, RPG, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (29)

When are they going to fire Molyneux? He's a glorified PR monkey and he's terrible at his job. He promises the world and delivers some third world nation.

Money talks. As long as people continue to buy games he promotes he'll have his job. Vote with your dollars and don't buy Fable 3.

Or vote with your dollars and buy the hell out of it, because you know it will be great. Seriously, the guy's just enthusiastic, he loves what he does and he oversells his products. When he starts making bad games as a result of his 'broken promises' you can start calling for his resignation or termination.

If you don't like his games, don't play them. If you do love his games, you really have nothing to complain about now do you? And there's a lot more people out there that love his games than those that don't, so give him a break . . . Or at the very least, stop posting these exact same comments every time Joystiq publishes Molyneux articles.

Fable 2 was crap.

I bought all of the Fable II DLC at once. I had just beaten the main game and wanted more. That said, I won't be buying the DLC for Fable III without a specific number on how much gameplay it adds. The DLC for Fable II was too short and didn't add anything to the experience for me. In fact it was such a let down, I like the main game a little less.

The first episode caused me to rebuy the game, so did it make me buy the episodes? no, but it did lead to an extra sale.

I met Peter Molyneux before. He's great at selling one thing and delivering another. It's the truth. Get over it.

Many of my friends only played the first free episode and then never bought the remaining episodes and never bought the game.

I really wish the wheels would come off the PM hate bandwagon, getting sick of listening to you guys.

The Molyneux bashing kind of annoys me, but I can't completely disagree. His comments these days remind me of the early stages of George Lucas' dementia.

Happens to any creative force that doesn't work actively to keep constructive criticism viewed as a valuable tool. When you surround yourself with yes-men who think every honeyed word that drips from your perfectly sculpted lips is the written gospel... yeah, you're going to start making some bad calls. Nature of the beast.

I think the key here is how many last episodes were sold (people who the game managed to keep hooked that long), not how many people downloaded the demo for free :P

Yeah, that makes no sense... Even I downloaded the episode 1 'demo', but would never buy the whole package that way. Especially, seeing how you can buy the entire retail disc package for under $20, less than half of the downloadable episodes. Oh, and I didn't really like the game that much, anyways. I guess that would be a factor, too.

Molyneux's reality distortion field is only second to Steve Jobs'.

Bunch of PM zealots in here. Have fun with that.

They should do this for more games, it's much better then a demo. A good example would be Darksiders, seeing as the demo was a good chunk of the game it wouldn't of hurt it.

Bunch of crybabies on here who can't stand it when someone has a differing opinion. My opinion is even based on fact. He promises 15 things and delivers maybe half. It's ridiculous. Don't get me wrong.....Fable 2 was good but it was missing a lot compared to what he promised. Fable 1 was much worse as far as undelivered features are concerned.

No one denies that he promises more than he delivers. The stupidity of your comment came from the notion that he should be "fired" because his games are really good, but not quite as good as he says they're going to be.

Face it, everyone oversells their products when they talk about them, he just likes to talk about them more than most. Remember when Bungie said that Halo ODST was going to set a new bar for story telling and character attachment?

And FFS man, it's not difficult to figure out how to use the reply button.

You should be fired from the internet.

My entire point is that PM is all PR....Just like Cliffy B. The problem with a PR monkey who promises something and doesn't deliver is that it makes him look like a liar and it makes the company he works for look bad. Which is why he should be fired. It's pretty simple.

Except that he's not just all PR, he makes pretty good games (even though they're not as good as he says they'll be, which is true of everyone) behind it as well.

You really think Epic and Lionhead are upset over the 15 million sales they've gotten out of Gears, Gears 2, and Fable 2 this generation?

Fable 2 episodic experiment deemed 'massively successful' by Molyneux and 'Epic failure' by everyone else

I much prefer downloading whole games than parts of them. Can't use previous saves with the episode version.

The problem with Peter M is he talks too much about his projects. People get worked up over a company like Blizzard for keeping their game info secret, it's because of this reaction.
Peter is guilty of nothing but communicating with us, and it bites him in the arse. Just be happy he has passion and stop acting like he owes you something. I wish he would release Fable 2 on PC however. Getting sick of the low resolution I've got to stomach to play it on the 360, even at 1080p it's a fuzzy shame compared to Fable 1 on the PC.

There's a gradient of communication, here, though. We'll go with your example of Blizzard.

Blizzard keeps stuff very close to the chest until it's near completion. It lets speculation run rampant and the less faithful might lose interest, but it usually pays off when their games are released without too many people keeping checklists of past promises.

Molyneux is very much the opposite. He'll comment on his plans before they're even plans. In a sense, he cries wolf a lot. Some people are really afraid of wolves, so they'll listen every time; others will believe less and less of what he says.

If anyone is taking this too seriously it's you. here's a quote from you:

"I would like to see you do any better... oh wait you cant! so STFU."

Indeed, I wasn't clear. I'm not saying Molyneux is the alternative to being close lipped, he's what happens when the developer talks TOO much.

Still, I'd rather have him blabbing about his hopes and dreams than hear nothing at all for a year. But I am able to take things with a grain of salt, and be ready for the inevitable edit.

Peter's kinda already let slip Fable III is going to have the same episodic set up ;)

http://www.couchcampus.com/gaming/gaming-news/fable-iii-to-also-be-released-in-episodes/

here is my problem with all this episodic crap. gta did it partially right and everyone else just does it totally wrong.

what they did right.
made a really great game a long game and the episodes are like games in themselves, borrowing from the story line but being different experience.

what they did wrong. Making it available on only one platform.

What others do just plain wrong, cut up the original game and take side missions or sub plots or even the proper ending for the game as episodes so they can make more money off the same work instead of making more money off of something new for the customer but familair.

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Fable 2 episodic experiment deemed 'massively successful' by Molyneux

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