In March 2016, Microsoft shuttered Lionhead Studios, putting an end to its storied history as one of the most creative developers of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Now, Sega Europe has announced a publishing deal with Two Point Studio, a company made up of some of the staff that worked on Lionhead’s greatest successes.
Two Point Studios is led by Lionhead co-founder Mark Webley and its former creative director Gary Carr. The pair have decades of industry experience between them, and have contributed to classic titles including Theme Park, Black & White, Theme Hospital, and Fable.
Webley and Carr have taken advantage of the connections they have made over the course of their careers to assemble a talented development team at Two Point Studios. Many of its staff were a part of Lionhead during its peak, and some were even a part of its predecessor, Bullfrog Productions.
“We’ve been talking to Two Point Studios for a long time and are really impressed with their vision,” said John Clark, Sega Europe’s vice president of commercial publishing. “We’re delighted to announce our partnership and look forward to revealing more about the project early next year.”
Little has been said about the project that Two Point Studios is working on, but Sega’s announcement of the new partnership did hint at a couple of small details. It seems that the game will be an entirely new property, which isn’t too surprising, and there’s an indication that it will be released for the PC, which makes sense given the studio’s expertise.
In recent years, we’ve seen Sega become much more focused on the PC market, with platform-exclusive franchises like Dawn of War, Total War, and Football Manager all proving to be very profitable. The deal with Two Point Studios seems to suggest that going forward, the company plans to expand its PC publishing interests even further.
