According to a leaker, Playground Games’ game could be preceded by another Xbox exclusive later this year.
Let’s start with the Fable reboot from Playground Games, the company behind Forza Horizon. NatetheHate claims that it could be released sometime in 2025, but this is 2023 information, so plans could have changed. It should be added that Fable has been in development for years, and back in January 2018 (more than six years ago!), Eurogamer reported that Microsoft had handed over development of the IP to Playground Games. This was officially confirmed by the Redmond-based company in the summer of 2020, and that’s more than three and a half years ago.
In March 2022, lead game designer Juan Fernández de Simón revealed that Fable’s development was moving slowly due to Playground Games’ lack of familiarity with the genre, as well as being a small team for a typical AAA studio. Then, in June, Senior Producer Amie Loake revealed that scope resizing was a common occurrence during development. Then, at the end of the year, Jez Corden, writing for Windows Central, blamed the slow development on the ForzaTech engine, which the studio hadn’t designed for open-world RPGs!
In 2023, Andy Robinson, editor-in-chief of VGC, wrote that Fable was in development, but Playground Games was still in the early stages. Then, at the Xbox Games Showcase, we saw the game in action on Xbox Series, which is already being worked on by Baldur’s Gate 3 producer Ryan Clark. If the rumor is true, Fable could be released for Xbox Series and PC (alongside Game Pass) towards the end of 2025, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it in early 2026.
NatetheHate also talked about Contraband, which was announced for June 2021, but has since disappeared. He thinks this game could be released this year, but added that he doesn’t have much confidence in it. id Software is working on a new part of an existing IP (Quake?) and has undergone a new Banjo-Kazooie reboot. None of this is official, of course!
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