Xbox plays down the significance of Perfect Dark and Fable social accounts

Xbox has played down the significance of recently registered Perfect Dark and Fable Twitter accounts.

The social accounts @PerfectDarkGame and @Fable were initially discovered by journalist Tom Warren, reportedly both registered to Microsoft e-mail accounts.

The @PerfectDarkGame account later tweeted and claimed to be an unofficial creation, which happened to have one sole follower: the original game’s producer and Xbox exec Ken Lobb.

However, this was after Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg suggested that both accounts were official creations, for the purpose of securing IP.

Greenberg claimed that, “these accounts have been inactive for years” and that “it’s standard practice to secure social handles for our IP.” The accounts in question were registered in March and June this year.

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has previously suggested that new first-party studio The Initiative could be working on a legacy IP, long speculated to be Rare’s spy shooter Perfect Dark – which would match the gameplay described in a recent designer CV.

Further fuelling speculation, Spencer tweeted in January of this year that he had visited the Initiative team and that they were “challenging themselves to do new things (and old things) in new ways.”

Xbox has significantly expanded its first-party games production ahead of the next console generation and at least one franchise, RPG series Fable, is understood to be the subject of a revival at its Playground studio.

further reading

Xbox studio’s secret project contains ‘gadgets and surveillance cameras’

It’s previously been suggested The Initiative is working on a reboot

Although the Forza Horizon studio remains extremely secretive about its RPG project, it has been actively hiring for the game’s development team for the past three years.

So far it’s snapped up Anthem’s lead environment artist, Ghost Recon Wildlands’ lead character artist, Hellblade’s lead animator, Metal Gear Solid V’s project manager and most of the Batman: Arkham Knight scriptwriting team.

Microsoft will show off its games line-up as part of a first-party Xbox Series X showcase in July.