Last week, you may remember that we covered a potential "surprise" Xbox-published title that could show up at Gamescom 2026 in an announcement, and there's now been a suggestion that game is the third entry in the Ori series.

One of the two people who mentioned the surprise was someone known as NateTheHate on social media, and they took to ResetEra over the weekend to state that "a new Ori was what I was referring to", but that they still didn't have confirmation on whether it would appear at Gamescom or not.

"A new Ori is what I was referring to. I do not have confirmation whether it will or won't be at Gamescom, yet."

In response, the CEO of Moon Studios (developer of the first two Ori games) has suggested that he believes the rumour is "nonsense", and that his company have been discussing trying to acquire the IP from Microsoft.

Here's a sample of what he had to say in his two tweets about the situation:

"Once again there’s a bunch of people asking me about Ori 3 since there’s rumors floating about… As before, I haven’t heard anything about any of this.

I think after having put billions into 343 to handle Halo and not being able to recapture the old magic, I’d guess that by now MS has learned their lesson that the right talent needs to work on those IP’s, otherwise you’ll undoubtedly get more slop. Internally, we’ve been discussing our interest in purchasing the IP back. I doubt any other studio could really do much with it, so it makes sense for this one to come home to Moon!"

"I can confirm that the Ori 3 rumors are nonsense."

There's been speculation that the rumour might be correct anyway and Xbox is working with a totally different studio to create the next Ori game, but the Moon Studios CEO says he's spoken to people at Microsoft about the rumour.

That would appear to make it very unlikely, although it sounds like there's a lot of potential for a third Ori game in the future in any case. We're still keeping our fingers crossed for some kind of surprise at Gamescom ONL on Tuesday!

Would you be shocked to see Xbox create a new Ori game without Moon Studios' involvement? Tell us below.