"Big" Fable II Announcement Temporarily on Hold

Microsoft pulls the string and calls off the announcement for this week, rescheduling it for Monday, November 24.

Remember the "big" Fable II news that developer Lionhead was drumming up excitement for? The "big" news that was supposed to be unleashed this week? Yeah, so, about that ...

Lionhead has updated its official blog with a "small" bit of Fable II news, saying that the announcement everyone is expecting (whatever it may be) has been placed on hold due to a request from their owner, Microsoft Game Studios. With today being NXE-Day and all, the Redmond giant felt as though this was a bad week for their UK brethren to drum up support once more for their acclaimed RPG, instead opting for the news to be shared on Monday, November 24. Sounds reasonable enough, but why does this sound so familiar?

This is the second time in six months that Microsoft has pulled a previously planned announcement in the eleventh hour, much to the disappointment of fans. While the Fable II news is not expected to be on as grand of a scale, Bungie's Halo 3: Recon debut suffered the same fate at this year's E3, with a viral campaign and countdown all leading up to a no-show for the shooter. Recon did eventually receive its limelight at the Tokyo Game Show, an odd place for a Halo title if there ever was one.

As a consolation prize, Lionhead has prepared a Fable II premium theme to purchase on the Xbox Live Marketplace for fans to gussy up their newly minted consoles, which is available now.