It’s long been rumored, hoped, and generally speculated that a new Fable game is in the works and could come to the Xbox Series X. But that doesn’t look to be the case.
That’s because Aaron Greenburg, general manager at Xbox, has shot down speculation that a new Fable game (let’s call it Fable 4), and a new Perfect Dark game were potentially set for an announcement, assumedly at Microsoft’s July Xbox 20/20 event.
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The speculation was stoked when The Verge journalist Tom Warren noticed the two seemingly inactive placeholder accounts on Twitter with the @fable and @PerfectDarkGame, one of which was being followed by a Microsoft employee and another by an account with an address registered to Microsoft. This prompted Warren and others to then chew over the idea that these were accounts set up ahead of an announcement for the two games.
However, Greenberg tweeted Warren in reply stating: “I know everyone is hungry for news, but sorry to get your hopes up. These accounts have been inactive for years, it’s standard practice to secure social handles for our IP.”
I know everyone is hungry for news, but sorry to get your hopes up. These accounts have been inactive for years, it’s standard practice to secure social handles for our IP.June 28, 2020
That pretty much pours cold water over the idea that a Fable 4 and Perfect Dark games announcement would happen at some point soon. But that’s not to say such games won’t be made on for the Xbox Series X, simply that they won’t be showcased in the near future; that’s unless this is misdirection by Greenberg.
A tale of Fable
The Fable series originally debuted in on the original Xbox, offering a Zelda-like third-person action RPG with the main thrust of the game centred around making good or bad choices. It was much-loved and spawned sequels that popped up on the Xbox 360, with the third game being developed in-house by Microsoft after it acquired developer Lionhead Studios.
But after Fable 3 the series went dark, only with the odd Fable: The Journey Kinect game arriving in 2012 to do little to satiate fans’ appetite for a new Fable game. A free-to-play collectable card game in the form of Fable Fortune also failed to deliver a proper follow-up to Fable 3.
In 2013 a teaser trailer for Fable Legends showcased a five-player Xbox One game where players could choose to play as a one of a quartet of heroes or a villain. But that game got cancelled in 2016 along with the announcement that Lionshead Studios was closing.
All looked doomed for Fable 4, until Xbox boss Phil Spencer seemingly implied that the game was being worked on as E3 2018. Since then there have been practically no hints about Fable 4.
However, the Xbox Series X will need strong first-party exclusive games to see it square off against the PS5. As such, a Fable 4 game might not be around the corner but it could still be on the horizon.
The same could be said for Perfect Dark. Originally a hit Nintendo 64 first-person game developed by Rare, it was effectively reworked into Perfect Dark Zero for the Xbox 360, as Microsoft had acquired the developer in 2002. A new Perfect Dark game would help Rare rekindle its first-person shooter glory, having last worked on Sea of Thieves.
If Fable 4 and a new Perfect Dark do indeed come to the Xbox Series X, we can expect them to make heavy use of the console’s 12 teraflops of power and ray-tracing capabilities. And with a game like Fable 4 likely to have large open-world environments, we’d expect it to particularly benefit from the Xbox Series X’s speedy SSD. But time will tell if either of those games makes it out of the rumor mill and into reality.
