Today, January 22, Xbox held another one of its Developer Direct showcases. These streams show off a handful of games, usually from Xbox’s first-party studios or partners, and this time we got our first look at Fable, a deep dive into the next game in the Forza Horizon series, and a big reveal of the new project from Game Freak, the studio behind the mainline Pokémon RPGs. If you missed the stream, you can catch the VOD below, but if you just want the highlights, read on.
Forza Horizon 6
First up, Playground Games and Turn 10 showed off Forza Horizon 6, the next entry in the open-world racing series. This game will take place in Japan, with players working their way up a racing tournament, starting as a tourist racer and eventually going pro.
The game will let you drive around Japanese cities and through the mountains and roads of the countryside, and will include 550 cars at launch. You’ll also be able to build your own base that other players can visit, meet up with and show off your cars to friends and strangers, and take part in impromptu races, all within the open world.
The game will launch on May 19 on PC and Xbox, with a PS5 version coming “later this year.”
Beast of Reincarnation
Next up, we saw Game Freak’s Beast of Reincarnation, and it is still jarring to see that company’s logo in an Xbox showcase, but here we are.
The action RPG does have some of the Pokémon developer’s trademark human and animal companionship, though, as the game stars both a samurai heroine named Emma and her wolf companion Koo who fights alongside her. Beast of Reincarnation takes place in a post-apocalyptic Japan that sports a combination of fantasy and sci-fi aesthetics. Emma hunts corrupted monsters alongside Koo in what looks like a pretty fast-paced hack-and-slash action game with some strategic elements, which come through in the commands you issue to your wolf friend to have him use his own abilities in battle. The game will launch in the summer.
Kiln
Third up we got a surprise appearance from Double Fine. The segment started with studio head Tim Schaefer explaining the company’s annual Amnesia Fortnight tradition, a two-week prototyping session. Kiln, a pottery brawler, started as one of the prototypes, and is now being made into a full game which Shaefer describes as an “online multiplayer pottery party brawler.” You can create all manner of pots, vases, jugs and the like on the game’s pottery wheel and decorate them to your heart’s content, then use these creations as the characters you use to duke it out in the game’s multiplayer battles. It looks cute, and is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox in the spring.
Fable
And finally, we head back to Playground Games to check in on Fable. The long-awaited return to Albion will begin like most Fable games do, with you starting as a child who awakens to heroic powers after a tragic origin story. This game will be open world, which I guess isn’t that surprising because it’s 2026, but it looks like it’s keeping a lot of the fairytale-like visual identity of previous Fable games. The combat looks weighty, almost Witcher-like, though you’ll still be using melee, magic, and ranged weapons as in previous Fable games.
Also returning in Fable are the series’ life sim elements, such as the ability to marry, buy a home, work a job, and other ways of interacting with the population of Albion. The game will include hundreds of NPCs who are reactive to your decisions and reputation. The morality system is different than that in previous games where your actions were flatly seen as either good or evil; here, an action that makes you look worse in the eyes of some characters may make you look better in the eyes of others.
Fable is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox this fall.
