Are Fable and Perfect Dark in trouble?

Are these games cooked?

  • Press F to pay respects

  • They’re coming, calm down

  • Development extended to support multi-platform on launch

  • It’s Series S fault


Results are only viewable after voting.
From a pure economics standpoint, yes. From a brand reputation perspective, that'd be costly.

I think everyone considers Perfect Dark a write-off. There's nothing of interest there for fans of the franchise, and for everyone else, it looks like a "well...why?" kinda game that's not gonna pull them away from their Fortnite or whatever.

However, the snippets shown of Fable reveal a game that might actually be fun to play, and is probably sitting pretty on a lot of peoples' radar screens. Killing that would probably be the self-infliction of a fatal wound for what little remains of Team Xbox's corporeal form.
I bought the original trilogy at launch and thought they were the very definition of bland and mediocre. I kept going back because of the hope that they'd realize the promise of the elevator pitch, but in hindsight they really couldn't have been further from the mark. Playground has better things to do. Horizon 6 is going to be a breakthrough hit and I'm predicting it becomes the Call of Duty of racing now that Playstation is on board. Fable at the very very best will barely break even. But the opportunity cost of keeping Playground peeps tied up for so long is incalculable.
 
That Perfect Dark trailer from last year was clearly just a bullshot vertical slice.

Not sure why its taking so long to produce what basically looks like a Deus Ex reskin.
 
So papa Phil was saying "please be excited" in a roundabout way. If they don't deliver the goods next year I'm pooping on your front porch.

I mean, they're already putting out 7, 8 first party published games this calendar year, not even including the late PS5 ports.

Gotta space it out at a point, good first-world-problem to have on their part.
 
It's always "next year" with Phil
Definitely during the Xbox One years. They didn't hype up this years show. Greenie was even telling people to cool their jets.

I'm willing to see what they do for the 25 year anniversary. Getting to close to next gen reveal time so maybe that happens next year.
 
If your game isn't gta or something like that and has been in development for over 5 years, i assume it's total garbage even if the trailers end up looking decent. Would never buy it until i hear impressions. So yeah i used to be hyped for perfect dark.
 
The perfect dark gameplay reveal had me like that one chick on the plane "That mf'er is NOT REAL"

I base this on nothing at all, but I think 1 of these 2 games gets cancelled
 
Both of these games were announced 5 years ago, and were not shown during today's Xbox Showcase.

Fable was slated for a 2025 release, until it was pushed back again in February.

Gameplay was shown for Perfect Dark last year but was absent in this year's show and still has no release window.
You answered your own question. They've already recently stated that Fable is 2026 and showed gameplay, and so will feature heavily at next year's showcase. They're focusing this year on games coming out this year. Which is fairly standard.

Perfect Dark's long road to becoming a finished product has been well-documented. And clearly it's not a 2025 release so since we've already seen what it is and what it looks like, no reason to spend time and resources on a media demo for 2025 in the final stages of development when they have plenty of other games to show. 🤷‍♂️
 
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Could've added State of Decay 3 to that title too. Real disappointed it wasn't shown.
God damn i didn't watch the show but sounds like they had nothing ...did they even show GEARS? It's 2025 and none of their heavy hitters seem anywhere close to releasing. Sony is almost as bad with nothing to show from Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica ..or Guerilla or Bluepoint
 
Fable will get a deep dive, and release date at the Jan direct. Same as Avowed. Same as Indiana Jones. Same as South of Midnight. All 3 turned out great.

Perfect Dark, who knows.
 
Are Fable and Perfect Dark in trouble?
No, they are under development.

MS announced them too early because didn't have anything else appealing to show and decided to announce them when maybe weren't even under full production.

They'll release them when ready (including the PS5 port available launch day).

Literally from the conference.

I'm excited to share that players will get to celebrate 25 years of Xbox with a new Fable, the next Forza, Gears of War E-Day, and the return of a classic that's been with us since the beginning.
So next year:
  • Fable (day one on PS5)
  • Forza Motosport PS5 port
  • Gears E-Day (day one on PS5)
  • Halo Master Chief Collection Remastered (includes PS5 port)
 
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I bought the original trilogy at launch and thought they were the very definition of bland and mediocre. I kept going back because of the hope that they'd realize the promise of the elevator pitch, but in hindsight they really couldn't have been further from the mark. Playground has better things to do. Horizon 6 is going to be a breakthrough hit and I'm predicting it becomes the Call of Duty of racing now that Playstation is on board. Fable at the very very best will barely break even. But the opportunity cost of keeping Playground peeps tied up for so long is incalculable.
I have zero fan loyalty to the Fable name. You're not wrong about them. I enjoyed Fable 1 for what it was at the time: a rather okayish-to-mid simple beat 'em up Action RPG with some silly, extraneous trappings laid overtop of it. But here's the thing. Even a middling game from that era trumps the trash they're putting out now. I realize that more and more as time goes on. The games we would have turned our noses to then deserved more than what we gave them... but that's not the point I'm trying to make right now. That's a tangent.

Fable 2 and 3 were dogshit, though, pure and simple. Bad, bad games.

Point is, even if the new Fable is just a mid but enjoyable action RPG - that's still a pretty great premise as far as I'm concerned. My fear is that'll be stuffed with pandering wokeist trash, as seems to be Microsoft's self-destructive wont these days, but if it manages to avoid that, cool.

Besides, I highly doubt there's much in common with the old games, mechanics-wise, so any disdain of the originals (however reasonable that disdain is), doesn't necessarily have to keep one from being hopeful in regards to this new entry.

I want to be cautiously optimistic about something in the gaming space, dammit.
 
was probably seen has a waste of resources to show more this early. They will likely do a deep dive for the event they do January months before release. A lot of what they showed from first party was stuff coming out this year. marketing is more effective closer to release, more details are finalized to be worth showing and it's again a waste of resource to arbitrary have something to show for an event. Devs used to complain about E3 specially because things can change in final product, throwway work happens and they end up having to crunch in order to be ready.

Being a no show is not an indicator of trouble especially if they already showed something recently for Fable and game taking a year break from marketing is not unheard after a first reveal.
 
God damn i didn't watch the show but sounds like they had nothing ...did they even show GEARS? It's 2025 and none of their heavy hitters seem anywhere close to releasing. Sony is almost as bad with nothing to show from Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica ..or Guerilla or Bluepoint
only thing from Gears that they showed was the re-remaster of 1 that they talked about a month or two ago
 
I mean, they're already putting out 7, 8 first party published games this calendar year, not even including the late PS5 ports.

Gotta space it out at a point, good first-world-problem to have on their part.
Oblivion, Doom and NG4 this year is dope. All credit to them for that (Bethesda hard carrying tho).

The rest of their lineup is meh. COD is normie trash that releases every year. I don't need to play Gears yet again. If Obsidian wasn't so limp wrist I'd care about their output. They have lots of games but I'm still left wanting.

They might as well make Perfect Dark and Fable next gen launch titles at this point.
 
They've been in trouble boss. Fable started development in 2017. Perfect Dark had a whole studio created and then implode for the project. Crackhead Dynamics as a replacement is a joke, and last year's footage was so obviously fake even the gaming press pointed it out at the time.
 
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Oblivion, Doom and NG4 this year is dope. All credit to them for that (Bethesda hard carrying tho).

The rest of their lineup is meh. COD is normie trash that releases every year. I don't need to play Gears yet again. If Obsidian wasn't so limp wrist I'd care about their output. They have lots of games but I'm still left wanting.

They might as well make Perfect Dark and Fable next gen launch titles at this point.

Perfect dark may very well be a cross gen, next gen launch game.

That canned trailer / demo they showed looked like something made just for a demonstration, not anything a work in progress etc.
 
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I have zero fan loyalty to the Fable name. You're not wrong about them. I enjoyed Fable 1 for what it was at the time: a rather okayish-to-mid simple beat 'em up Action RPG with some silly, extraneous trappings laid overtop of it. But here's the thing. Even a middling game from that era trumps the trash they're putting out now. I realize that more and more as time goes on. The games we would have turned our noses to then deserved more than what we gave them... but that's not the point I'm trying to make right now. That's a tangent.

Fable 2 and 3 were dogshit, though, pure and simple. Bad, bad games.

Point is, even if the new Fable is just a mid but enjoyable action RPG - that's still a pretty great premise as far as I'm concerned. My fear is that'll be stuffed with pandering wokeist trash, as seems to be Microsoft's self-destructive wont these days, but if it manages to avoid that, cool.

Besides, I highly doubt there's much in common with the old games, mechanics-wise, so any disdain of the originals (however reasonable that disdain is), doesn't necessarily have to keep one from being hopeful in regards to this new entry.

I want to be cautiously optimistic about something in the gaming space, dammit.
There are a lot of things to be very optimistic for. Just not many in the AAA realm. New Blood is releasing a trailer for a new project today. The real CDPR core developers have their new game releasing soon. The racing genre has never been better. RE9 has some real excitement around it. Clair Obscur delivered beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Really the only place lacking is AAA huge budget stuff. Some of it manages to deliver against the odds. Diablo IV was everything I wanted and more. Hell, I didn't even have the confidence to expect it to be as good as it was. Ready or Not delivered the SWAT 4 sequel we always wanted. IO Interactive is making a Bond game.
 
Trouble how?

Xbox still has to show games at the game awards. I'd save perfect dark for that.

Fable? All of this franchise has been over hyped under delivered dog shit. So this is par for the course.
 
Perfect Dark featuring Jaw-ana Dark looked crap from the beggining.

Fable might be in a bit of trouble but I can see that one coming out nicely in the end.
"Jaw-ana"

Hd Chuckle GIF
 
S SneakersSO did say back in February to expect delayed launches because Microsoft's teams were not prepared to go multiplatform. That by 2027 we should expect everything day and date with anything that can run the games.
 
There are a lot of things to be very optimistic for. Just not many in the AAA realm. New Blood is releasing a trailer for a new project today. The real CDPR core developers have their new game releasing soon. The racing genre has never been better. RE9 has some real excitement around it. Clair Obscur delivered beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Really the only place lacking is AAA huge budget stuff. Some of it manages to deliver against the odds. Diablo IV was everything I wanted and more. Hell, I didn't even have the confidence to expect it to be as good as it was. Ready or Not delivered the SWAT 4 sequel we always wanted. IO Interactive is making a Bond game.

Rogue Wolves' game does intrigue me, to be sure. I'm not so certain about Clair Obscur. I know everyone's eating that up right now, but that might be more we're in a freaking desert, parched for water, and we stumbled upon a tiny oasis. But maybe it really is all that. I might play it one day.

RE9 is more silly CapSlop, because they're allergic to going back to traditional horror, and I couldn't be less interested in it.

Suffice it to say, I dislike most of what you cited there, and I have my reasons for it. I don't mean that to be personal, but for me there's really not that much left to like anymore. There's a tremendous lack of tact, or tone-setting. Nobody knows how to theme anything properly, or how to be tasteful. That sounds like silly, prudish nit-pickery, but it isn't: tone-setting is one of the most important aspects of establishing how your creative output feels to play. I find the examples you cited by and large severely lacking in that regard, which sabotages the entire experience. So many of them feel like an insult to the player's intelligence.

And IO's "Bond game" can go straight to hell. It looks like boiled ass.

I apologize for sounding so negative. It's just that I can't drudge up any sort of positivity for this. I actually tried. It would be disingenuous for me to do so.

I guess I'll say that the Rogue Wolves thing does look pretty great. I came away very impressed with that one's trailer. Feeling pretty good about it.
 
Literally from the conference.

I'm excited to share that players will get to celebrate 25 years of Xbox with a new Fable, the next Forza, Gears of War E-Day, and the return of a classic that's been with us since the beginning.

I can't imagine this will be the case before the 25th anniversary.

I'm expecting we'll see the following games at the showcase:

Persona 4 Remake (coming to GamePass)
Splinter Cell Remake
Gears of War Reloaded
Outer Worlds 2
FF7 Remake (Coming to GamePass)
Gears E-Day

Maybe small clips of Fable, Perfect Dark.
 
S SneakersSO did say back in February to expect delayed launches because Microsoft's teams were not prepared to go multiplatform. That by 2027 we should expect everything day and date with anything that can run the games.
So it will have been 7 years from the launch of Series X before the new Gears shows up on it. No new Halo to wash the bad taste of Infinite out of my mouth until who knows when. It's crazy how this generation has turned out.
 
These games shouldn't be announced until closer to release. What RE9 did is perfect I think. The first time it's shown/announced and releases 8 months later assuming it's not delayed.
 
So it will have been 7 years from the launch of Series X before the new Gears shows up on it. No new Halo to wash the bad taste of Infinite out of my mouth until who knows when. It's crazy how this generation has turned out.
That just depends on when the next Gears launches. Could launch next year. In which case, it would still be about 6 years. Mind you, he didn't say 2027 is when to expect all of these games we know of. Only that by 2027 Microsoft's games should be releasing day and date on everything. Implying no more delays because of multiplatform work. He was NOT saying that Gears, Fable, or Perfect Dark won't launch until 2027.
 
fable is in development hell for sure.
its a whole new genre for the developer too, cant imagine all the battle scars they are acquiring.
 
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I'm fairly confident that Fable will arrive next year. It's had a rough ride, but some of that was to be expected, since Playground was doing something outside their wheelhouse. Some of the delay might be due to preparing a PS5 version to launch day-and-date. I'm almost certain it will arrive later next year, though.

I'm not sure about Perfect Dark. I haven't been paying close attention to it, but nothing I've heard has sounded promising. I don't expect them to outright cancel it, though. I expect it to be released eventually, although I couldn't tell you when.
 
Right before cod
Ah, thanks.

IMO a bad look to not show a game that was supposed to come out this year, just got delayed 3 months ago and you still have nothing to show. I will be shocked if the game actually releases in 2026.
 
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Yes. Xbox can't produce a good game if their lives depended on it, seeing the face of Joanna Dark in that trailer gave me nightmares for weeks and as far as fable is concerned yea maybe not give a RPG game to a dev that makes games with cars going around in a circle. I have no faith in anything xbox does whatsoever, its like a horse with 4 broken legs and just needs to be take out back and shot in the head.
 
Perfect Dark looked like the most "made using AI" game I have ever seen (even if It wasn't, although the art direction is highly questionable). It was a stretch to even call it a game trailer to be honest.
 
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