Molyneux: ‘Fable 2 co-op only possible because of LIVE’

The co-op features in upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Fable II are only possible because of the way Xbox LIVE is structured, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has said.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com in the second part of our mammoth interview with the outspoken industry legend, to be published later this week, Molyneux said that Xbox LIVE was the thing he loved most about the Xbox 360.

Lionhead is, of course, a Microsoft owned studio. When asked if he has ever fancied making a game for the PS3, Molyneux replied: “I um and ah because, OK, it’s a quite sophisticated piece of tech. These days I don’t get involved so much with shaders and the actual 3D design any more, the actual programming. It looks very complex. The 360 and the PS3 technically seem neck and neck. Sometimes I look at a title on the 360 it looks fantastic, sometimes I look at a title on PS3 and it looks fantastic. I can’t see a difference.

“What I would say, and this is not just me being the good company man, I’d say the thing I love about the 360 more than anything is nothing to do with the hardware, it’s all to do with LIVE. LIVE is still underexploited for a game mechanic. Some of the stuff in Fable II we’re doing with co-op is only possible because of the way that LIVE is structured. I love playing around with that stuff as a designer. Whereas PS3 doesn’t seem to be quite so mature on that side. They haven’t got quite the same infrastructure and service but, you know, yeah, I’d love to get games on every platform.”

As revealed over the weekend, Fable II won’t ship with online co-op play. Gamers will instead have to wait for a patch, scheduled for the first week of release, to enable the hotly anticipated feature.

You can satisfy all your Fable II needs over at our game page, where we’ve got a w-1250.html”>hands-on preview just waiting for you to read. For the first part of our mammoth interview with the Fable II creator, click here.