Lionhead Studios Receives Venture Capital

Lionhead Studios announced earlier today that they have received a multi-million pound investment from “a consortium of three leading venture capital firms”, most likely due to Fable now selling over 1.2 million copies. Here’s the full announcement:

VENTURE CAPITAL INJECTION STRENGTHENS LIONHEAD’S GLOBAL POTENTIAL

Guildford based Lionhead Studios today announced that it has received a multi-million pound investment from a consortium of three leading venture capital firms. The round of investment was lead by Ingenious Ventures and IDG VE and included technology specialist Add Partners.

Lionhead Studios is one of the world’s leading games development studios. Following the success of Black and White, which has sold in excess of two million copies, Lionhead’s second game Fable was published by Microsoft on the Xbox just under a month ago in the US and in Europe last week. It has already smashed several US sales records. Fable has now sold over 1.2 million copies. Lionhead currently has a further four products under development with two more games scheduled for release next year.

In announcing the investment, Chief Executive, Peter Molyneux said:

“Capital investment is necessary for any development studio wanting to create triple A titles and previously it has been the industry norm for this investment to come from publishers. However we were attracted to a different source of funding as we felt this would give us more flexibility for future product discussions with publishers. ”

Antony Fraser, Director of Ingenious Ventures said:” Lionhead is a leading example of British creativity. The games produced by Peter Molyneux and his team already captivate huge numbers of people around the world and we hope that, now Lionhead is producing games for consoles, there will be many more gamers who can enjoy them.”

Ajay Chowdhury, Managing Partner of IDGVE, said “The computer games industry continues to show excellent growth. Lionhead is one of the world’s leading independent developers and is extremely well positioned to benefit as the technology changes in the industry allow them to create further ground breaking games.”