You aren’t alone in wanting a new Fable trailer, as Microsoft Studios head Matt Booty wants to show it off, but Playground Games is understandably not quite ready yet.
The new Fable was revealed back in 2020, but as with many games these days, it was a cinematic trailer, so no gameplay to speak of. Who knows where it might be in development, but based on what Booty has said recently on a panel at PAX West, it still needs some more time in the metaphorical oven.
“Part of my job is giving air cover to the team,” Booty explained. “They don’t want to show stuff early before it’s ready to go, but if there’s one game where that’s kind of flipped around, where every time I see something I say, ‘We should show this’, it’s Fable. Because there’s a lot of cool stuff.”
However, Booty also noted that “the team has made it very clear that I am not going to be able to show anything until it’s ready,” which is obviously an incredibly understandable stance to take, given the series history with over-selling it thanks to one Peter Molyneux.
Fable wasn’t the only game that we haven’t heard much from in a while that Booty spoke about at PAX either. Perfect Dark, revealed last year, is in development over at The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics, the latter of which was sold to Embracer Group just a few months ago, leaving the game’s continued existence in question for those not in the know.
But according to Booty, everything’s just fine with the game. Discussing how big games just aren’t made by one developer any more, before going on to say “We just did this big partnership with Crystal Dynamics and I read online that this must mean there’s a problem. It’s quite the opposite.”
Booty goes on to explain how Crystal Dynamics is a very experienced AAA team, making them obviously someone Microsoft wants to work with, so it sounds like the acquisition hasn’t affected too much regarding Perfect Dark.
Booty was also asked about how you reboot Joanna Dark for a modern audience, where he acknowledged that some things “don’t age well.” And there are plenty of other things that Perfect Dark needs to do right too if Xbox wants a Game Pass hit on its hands.