Playground Games expands second team with new hires from BioWare, Rocksteady, Ninja Theory

Playground Games is bolstering its second studio with a number of big hires with impressive experience.

Playground Games, which Microsoft officially made a first-party studio at E3, has been hiring up for an upcoming open-world action RPG. Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, said as much at the show.

It's been reported that this project is a reboot of Fable, however, even if Microsoft has yet to announce what the game actually is.

Because Playground has only ever made racing games, the studio has been building up a second team at another premises, snatching up developers who previously worked on Metal Gear Solid, GTA 5 and other open-world, AAA games.

Games Industry is now reporting that even more talented developers have joined the team. Namely, 13-year BioWare veteran Noel Lukasewich, Rocksteady's Martin Lancaster, Chris Goodall and Rob den Dekker from Ninja Theory, Joe McKernan from Guerrilla Games, and Scotty Brown from EA Motive.

"We continue to attract world-class talent from around the world thanks to our exciting projects and the passion of our team. It's been a fantastic start for our second studio and I look forward to seeing it continue to grow over the coming months," said studio director Gavin Raeburn.

The open-world game Playground is hiring for is likely years away from release, so it's safe to assume it's being developed for the next Xbox. If that is the case, we're probably not going to hear about it in any official capacity for a while.