Fable Legends developer Lionhead has charged a small team with coming up with the studio's next big new intellectual property.
Studio head John Needham told Eurogamer Germany its eight-person incubation team, headed up by creative director Gary Carr, is as we speak working on prototypes for new games that are not related to fantasy role-playing series Fable, as well as new experiences that may be added to multiplayer online quest adventure game Fable Legends, due out on Xbox One in 2015.
"It's a team of about eight guys we have in the studio who are trying to build the next big IP for us," Needham said.
"They're working on a couple of new prototypes for completely different games - not Fable related. They'll also be working on new games we can put within Fable Legends as well.
"The primary purpose of the group is to come up with new game IP, and we'll hopefully this next year have something exciting to talk about," he said.
Lionhead, which has focused on the Fable franchise in recent years, is often asked whether it might revisit one of its older games for a potential sequel or reboot, with strategy game Black & White chief among them.
However, as Black & White was published by EA, it seems unlikely Lionhead, owned by Microsoft, will go back to it.
Instead, it wants to focus on new IP.
"We're going to come up with new IP.," Needham stressed.
"There is great IP in Lionhead's history, it's just spotty who owns what. Fable, clearly we're going to be investing most of the studio's efforts into that, but we'll have some new IP to share with you soon.""
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