Fable Is Targeting 2025, Contraband Might Launch This Year, Says Leaker

18.02.2024 - 14:17 / wccftech.com / Andy Robinson / Alessio Palumbo

It's been a while since we heard any new rumor about Fable, the reboot of the fantasy franchise in development at Playground Games.

According to leaker NatetheHate, the game is targeting next year as a potential release window, although he did say this was information he obtained at some point last year. As such, things may have since changed.

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At the same time, Fable has been in development for many, many years. The first whispers of a reboot handed by Microsoft to Playground (the studio behind the acclaimed Forza Horizon series) were shared by Eurogamer in January 2018. The game was officially confirmed to be in the making for PC and Xbox Series S|X during the Xbox Showcase 2020 hosted in that year's July.

However, any official information was hard to come by for years. That changed in March 2022, when former Principal Game Designer Juan Fernández de Simón revealed that the slow progress on the Fable project was partly due to Playground's inexperience with the genre and a 'frugal' approach (the studio was relatively small compared to the usual triple-A RPG teams).

Then, in June, rumors of a reduced scope prompted an official response from Senior Producer Amie Loake, who commented that resizing scope is a regular component of game development. In late 2022, though, another report on the slow development pace appeared, with Jez Corden surmising it could have been caused by adapting the ForzaTech engine to an open world RPG.

The Fable rumor mill in 2023 wasn't too exciting, either, with Andy Robinson claiming the game was still in early full production. However, Playground finally showed the game running on Xbox Series S|X during last year's Xbox Games Showcase. Since then, the UK studio brought Baldur's Gate 3 producer Ryan Clark on board.

If NatetheHate's information is correct, Playground might be attempting to launch Fable in late 2025. Of course, the reality of game development is that a delay is always around the corner, and it wouldn't be too surprising if it slipped into 2026.

The leaker also said Contraband, another project missing in action since it was announced in June 2021, might launch in 2024. To be fair, he also mentioned he doesn't personally have faith in that.

To round up the Xbox first-party update, id Software is reportedly working on an existing IP which should be announced this year, while the new Banjo-Kazooie game has been rebooted.