Plans seem to have coalesced around Playground Games’ Fable.
As reported by The Gamer, they have independently corroborated Tom Warren’s report that Fable is now slated to release in 2025. Playground Games initially announced that they were shifting gears from their years of work on the Forza Horizon games, to this reboot of Lionhead’s classic RPG franchise.
While most AAA titles nowadays are expected to take between five to six years before release, seven will be running just a little bit too long for Fable. Now there are rumors of troubles in development behind the scenes, but they don’t seem to have been well substantiated.
If anything, it’s become quite obvious that practically all of Microsoft’s slate that they revealed in the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase has still not released yet and are still on the way. The issue may not necessarily be that all the games are undergoing development troubles, but Xbox is still sorting out the best way to work around all these titles and their potential releases. After all, Phil Spencer now has Activision and Bethesda to worry about, aside from Xbox.
Tom Warren also claims that Microsoft has decided to keep Fable as an Xbox exclusive. This topic of Microsoft Gaming exclusivity has become a hot button issue among gamers and the industry, after Microsoft released four of their first party titles to the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. They had referred to this move as an experiment, but since then, speculation has run rampant that Microsoft no longer has any exclusives left.
If Fable were to be an Xbox exclusive, it will signal several things all at once. For one, it debunks that long feared fan rumor. But on top of that, it demonstrates that Microsoft has a lot of confidence in Playground Games. It will also finally help form this picture of a solid slate of Xbox titles, that should sway consumers to buy into this console.
We already know that expectations are quite high for Fable, when Playground Games’ trailer featured celebrity comedian Richard Ayoade. For all we know, he may not be the only famous face that turns up for this title. If this rumor is true, Microsoft may confirm it themselves when Fable is previewed again in this year’s Xbox Games Showcase. The timing is just too perfect for an insider to let this much information leak out. Maybe this leak won’t matter, when it becomes official in a matter of days.
