10 Video Game Franchises That Just Sat Out An ENTIRE Generation

4. Fable

Splinter Cell
Microsoft

Alongside Halo, Gears of War and Forza, Fable was once a crucial component of Microsoft's first-party line-up. It was Xbox's premier RPG, a product of Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios. Yet unlike its exclusive contemporaries, Fable's popularity has been a rocky road at times.

It comes down to the creator himself, who often made overzealous promises for his releases and refused to deliver on them. Whether it was trees growing in real-time in the game world or video game characters spawning offspring, many of the proposed features wouldn't come to pass.

On one side of the fanbase, Fable has its fans, while others viewed it as an endless disappointment. The trilogy wrapped up in 2010 and the franchise then entered spin-off territory with Fable: The Journey, a misfire of a Kinect spin-off that fans weren't interested in.

From here, the franchise would struggle to figure out what to do with itself. Peter Molyneux would move on and form 22Cans. Following frequent missed targets and a cancelled multiplayer spin-off that proved difficult to make, Fable would skip over the Xbox One completely. It appears the franchise was killed off for good with the closure of Lionhead in 2016, but it will make a return on Xbox Series S/X.

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