Fable is coming to PS5 day-and-date and it’s going to be huge.
Already the game has racked up outrageous engagement on Sony’s social media channels, with its PlayStation teaser trailer approaching 500k views at the time of writing – and its X (or Twitter) post attracting over 25k likes.
It’s clear the game is going to be big when it launches later this year, then, but why the decision to release it day one when Forza Horizon 6 will be made to wait.
Watch on YouTubeSubscribe to Push Square on YouTube167k
Well, speculation suggests the port of Playground’s latest Japan-based racer simply wasn’t ready, but the developer has been targeting PS5 more aggressively since Microsoft’s multiformat shift.
However, here’s the official word from founder Ryan Fulton, speaking as part of an interview with IGN:
“Within Playground, we have two projects which have made slightly different decisions, although the endpoint is the same. And I think as a game developer, the most important thing to me is that the greatest number of people play my games as possible. That's what we're in this for. I think that's true of most developers. We want the largest number of people to experience our games and enjoy them.”
Fulton diplomatically touched upon Xbox’s changing strategy, explaining that “the way of the industry […] has been platform expansion”. We’d caveat that’s more of a Microsoft thing, although we suppose it’s true that even PlayStation has been looking beyond the boundaries of its ecosystem, at platforms such as PC.
The reality is that PS5, along with PC, is probably going to be the biggest destination for Fable – especially as there’s no Xbox Game Pass to cannibalise full-price sales.
It’s fascinating to see one of Microsoft’s most enduring franchises go through a transition like this, but we suppose at this point it’s simply a sign of the times.