Microsoft's Xbox marketing boss, Aaron Greenberg, has played down the significance of the recent registration of two new Twitter accounts – @Fable and @PerfectDarkGame.
Journalist Tom Warren tweeted news of the two new accounts, reporting that both were only recently registered - the Fable one in March, and the Perfect Dark one only this month – and noting that "a Microsoft Xbox employee is following one, and the other is registered to a Microsoft email address".
I’m not sure who discovered the @fable and @PerfectDarkGame placeholders, but a Microsoft Xbox employee is following one, and the other is registered to a Microsoft email address 👀 pic.twitter.com/MagqUbPiZfJune 27, 2020
Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg responded to the tweet, however, stating: "I know everyone is hungry for news, but sorry to get your hopes up. These accounts have been inactive for years, it’s standard practice to secure social handles for our IP."
I know everyone is hungry for news, but sorry to get your hopes up. These accounts have been inactive for years, it’s standard practice to secure social handles for our IP.June 28, 2020
This only poured more fuel on speculative fires, as clearly neither account has been "inactive for years". And whilst the owner of @PerfectDarkGame has since unlocked the account and said they "created this account after hearing about the @fable one", adding they were "sorry to disappoint everyone [as they are] just a normal guy who got the @", from most of the comments to the tweets… well, it appears few believe them.
Perfect Dark released 20 – 20! – years ago now. In the GamesRadar+ Perfect Dark remaster review we gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, stating: "Perfect Dark is a conspicuously aged game; many years older it seems, than Halo, and somehow even older than the less ambitious but more solid GoldenEye from four years earlier. But if you were there at the time, if you queued with us at the game store and claimed your pre-order, if you remember that summer’s multiplayer bloodbaths at a framerate you never realised was bad, if you can hum the Carrington Institute’s pause music without even thinking - you simply have to get hold of this revival of Perfect Dark, no matter how sadly imperfect it is today."
There's a lot to get excited about in gaming this year. Here are the upcoming games of 2020 we really just can't wait for.
Half-Life devs worried Gabe Newell "promised things that they couldn't possibly deliver" for the iconic FPS, but "they just didn't know" that they'd be able to do it yet
Former Valve exec recounts the meeting where Half-Life's publisher almost killed the iconic FPS: "Half-Life would quietly die. I was stunned"
