Watching videogame studios try and bob and weave around Grand Theft Auto 6's launch—especially when it was up in the air when exactly it'd come out—is a little like watching a flock of Marios (is that the correct plural noun? A mama mia of Marios?) all trying to dodge the same whomp.
As was the case with the new Fable game, which got punted over into 2027 to avoid debuting among an absolutely rammed lineup. And while Xbox was playing coy about which game it was trying to avoid back then, we've now got some soft, tongue-in-cheek confirmation that it probably was Grand Theft Auto 6, yeah.
Speaking to IGN at Gamescom 2026, Fable's director Ralph Fulton says: "I think the rationale behind moving us out of October, the date that we were in previously, is pretty apparent to everybody. I feel great about that. I mean, I was really looking forward to shipping this game this year. I didn't want to have to do another January 1 speech to the team about ‘this is the year we ship Fable,’ which I'm now going to have to do.
"But the rationale for it is absolutely sound. I'm glad that we're avoiding that chaotic window.” For what it's worth, the window itself includes a ton of non-GTA stuff. This summer's been a touch dry on big new releases, but in the wider videogame industry you've got Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Blood of Dawnwalker, two Star Wars games, Marvel's Wolverine, Control Resonant, Gears of War: E-Day, and Phantom Blade Zero all before the year's even out.
But even Fulton cops that, yeah, the big one's the main reason: "We don't run scared of other big games. We're a big game ourselves. We hold ourselves to high standards. I'm happy to go toe-to-toe with a bunch of other games. There's just one that I'm happy to avoid entirely." Fair enough.
