In an interview with Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, who seems to be part of the Applied Games group at Microsoft's Research Labs in Cambridge, Develop find out that the Research Labs are working with Lionhead (and Rare) on the more challenging aspects of their games. Moneyshot:
So you guys have a lot of involvement with Lionhead and Rare?
Yeah, we’re working closely with the both of them. For example, Lionhead are working on the idea of one-button combat in Fable 2, and that’s a fairly ambitious plan. We’re working on applying the same sort of techniques as those I just described in the racing example, where ideally it’d be fun if you could have your character learn and adapt its fighting technique from experience, or even switch between attack and defence mode and realise that the objective now is to minimise damage received.
Joaquin also pointedly says that the Research Labs are pretty much responsible for the whole Silicon Minds idea.
I suppose this is one of the many benefits of having Microsoft as your publisher, I mean If LH were working on this stuff solo, how long would it have taken them to get the game finished? 
