Xbox put on a stuffed Developer Direct back in January, with one notable exclusion. While Doom: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Ninja Gaiden 4 were all part of the event, Fable was conspicuously absent despite its 2025 release window. This was when I started to get a bad feeling. We’d only seen one trailer for Fable despite its supposedly impending release (aside from its CG reveal), with no promise of more. It all felt a little thin on the ground for a game coming in so hot.
It turned out my fears were well founded. We’ve now gotten word from Xbox Game Studios lead Craig Duncan that Fable has been delayed into 2026 to “give [it] more time”. While this news isn’t necessarily surprising given how little we’ve seen of the fantasy RPG so far, it’s still pretty disappointing.
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I’m Still Optimistic, Against All Odds
That said, I don’t feel all that negatively about it. The delay announcement came alongside, finally, some new pre-alpha footage of the game, and it looked pretty good. While it was fairly light on actual gameplay and story, it was, at the very least, very pretty. Its urban areas are beautiful and the lighting is glorious. It’s certainly living up to the visual fidelity and aesthetic appeal that Playground Games is known for while simultaneously giving off the aura of a cutesy yet corrupt fantasy land just like the Lionhead originals.
A delay isn’t always necessarily a bad thing. Considering how many games these days are shoved unceremoniously out the door before they’re fully done cooking (Civilization 7 being the most recent example), it’s probably a good thing when studios are given more time to develop a game instead of being forced to crunch and deliver a subpar product. Duncan says as much himself, saying, “We do these things for the best of the games and the teams, and ultimately that results in the best games, or the best game for the community.”
But What Does This Mean For Xbox’s Year?
That said, a lot of us at TheGamer (myself included) have expressed our hopes that finally, 2025 might be the year that Xbox finally gets back on its feet. With a solid slate of games, many of which have already launched and done well before even arriving on rival platforms, it was looking like a big year to be an Xbox player.
But a lot of the discourse around the game’s releases have given me pause and prompted me to reconsider how likely this is to be true. Avowed generally reviewed well but seems to be a surprisingly polarising game, with many reviewers enjoying it immensely and others (like our own Stacey Henley) just not clicking with it. Negative comparisons to other games, in turn vehemently defended by fans, underline this clash.
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Meanwhile, South of Midnight previews lauded its writing and visuals, but many criticised the thinness of its combat. As we all well know, middling gameplay can well ruin the experience of playing an otherwise great game, and it’s hard to say if that will be the case with South of Midnight before it launches in April.
Considering that The Outer Worlds 2, Clair Obscur, and Doom: The Dark Ages will be multiplatform, Fable was going to be Xbox’s big hitter exclusive of the year (Gears of War: E-Day feels unlikely), and its delay puts Xbox on the back foot when it comes to the year’s release schedule. Out of all of these games, Doom and Fable were most likely to be console sellers, and one of them is now out of the picture while the other is still available on PlayStation, albeit not free via a subscription service.
On top of that, with a steady pace of Day One releases on Game Pass, this might have gleaned the company a lot of sales, but that pace might now be thrown off with Fable’s exclusion. Maybe the lineup will be jazzed up with some as yet unconfirmed releases, but the chances of Xbox finally dominating this year are looking thinner and thinner.
- Released
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2025
- ESRB
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t
- Developer(s)
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Playground Games