There's been a long-running narrative for some time now that Xbox never quite seems to make the Game of the Year cut, particularly at The Game Awards showcase that happens each and every December. There's no doubt that Microsoft has produced some great games in recent years, but that big TGA award always seems to allude them. However, after watching through this week's Fable showcase multiple times, we think the team might finally have the game to do it - so long as nothing else steals its thunder.

Talking about the game itself... Fable looks pretty darn stunning, right? The open-world fantasy nature of Playground's upcoming effort looks like the exact sort of thing that would capture the gaming community's imagination right through to The Game Awards at the end of the year. It's got that The Witcher 3/Hogwarts Legacy type of broad appeal we can see being a big hit, and when you combine that with the fidelity that ForzaTech always delivers, the established IP and everything the team is telling us so far, this has to be in with a shout of the big GOTY award, right?

Fable Could Finally Be Xbox's Big 'Game Of The Year' Contender, But There's One Problem1

You'd certainly think so, and despite the controversy surrounding Microsoft's recent multiplatform push, we think this will help Fable's chances as well. Yep, the team announced this week that Fable is launching day one on PS5 as well as Xbox and PC, which means that millions more players will have access to the game, potentially. Fable looks like just the sort of game that will sit well with the PS5 crowd as well, so, another box ticked there for its GOTY potential we reckon.

So, what's the big issue? Well it's big, and it's bold, and it could also be known as large robbery mobile. Yes, Grand Theft Auto 6 (at the time of writing) is still scheduled to launch later this year, which means the folks over at Rockstar could easily swipe any potential award right out of Playground's hands. We know that GTA 6 will be the biggest game on the planet when it comes out, and it'll make for ridiculously stiff competition for the likes of Xbox's Fable reboot. If Rockstar's next GTA makes it this year, and that's a big if, Microsoft and Playground certainly have their work cut out.

Okay, we know we grabbed you with the 'one problem' bit of the headline and have now revealed said problem, but there are of course other things that could arise to send Fable off its potential GOTY course. One of those would be a 2027 delay itself, but we really think 2026 is Fable's year, so we're going to cast that aside for the moment. The other biggie is if another amazing game pops up out of nowhere to surprise us all - we are only in January after all, and lots of developers will be keeping their cards close to their chest right now. 2026 is still all to play for.

You can look no further than 2025's GOTY to see what we mean. At this time last year, no one would have expected Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to blitz The Game Awards - but it did, in some style. Sandfall Interactive's debut effort set records for the number of awards it took home last year, including the coveted Game of the Year prize. With the amount of talented dev teams out there, there's always a chance that something like that comes along again in 2026.

Regardless of everything we've said here, we really hope that Fable ends up being in with that big GOTY shout come the end of the year. With Playground's Forza Horizon series being pushed aside for this sort of award due to it 'just being a racing game', we think the team deserves this shot after working away on rebooting this legendary series for the better part of a decade now. They just better hope that GTA 6, or something as incredible and surprising as Clair Obscur, doesn't come along to take the prize away from them.

So, is Fable in with a GOTY shout as things stand? Talk to us about all of this down below.