Fable Anniversary and several more Xbox Game Studios titles verified for Steam Deck

Aren't some of them on Steam?

Good time to fix the discontinued achievement in Fable Anniversary. There’s no reason XBox Game Studios can’t incorporate an in-game SmartGlass app to be used to get:

They should have done that as soon as the RL app went belly-up.

Allgorhythm said:They wouldn't even need to get that complicated. They could simply patch the game so that the Smartglass achievement auto-unlocks when people boot the game up. The three mainline Fable games have constantly been promoted on Games With Gold, Game Pass, etc. As some of the pinnacle output of Microsoft's first-party studios in the 360 era. They market them to this day. To have one random achievement in that trilogy be retired, one they could easily remedy, kind of sucks.

While discontinued achievements are a part of life, due to server shutdowns or things of that nature: this is an achievement that was simply a "gimme" for booting up a supported device for a few seconds. A marketing thing; it never required you to actually play the game in any way. So for them to patch it to auto-unlock now wouldn't harm anyone that got it earlier on. Since the requirement to get it wouldn't have changed.

360 games used to cost money for publishers to patch back in the day, (even Microsoft Studios ones,) but they changed that years ago. And the manpower needed to make this small a fix happen would be inconsequential. Especially considering it would be maintaining one of Microsoft's pride and joy titles/series. I hope someday a person with enough social media presence decides to take up the cause and make it a visible issue to them. Huge devs have been known to make tougher fixes for less (when the public response is visible in a decent way.)

ShinUkyo said:I’m in general agreement with what you say. Nevertheless, I’m sensitive to MS’s policy wrt achievements. It states that the unlock rules cannot be changed after an achievement is published. This is why I suggest applying the same unlock rules to the achievement by creating an in-game tablet or equivalent device with the smart glass app installed.

The player would find the device & activate it. You would see the smart glass app & open it. Once opened, the app would display the Fable Anniversary icon. Selecting it or clicking on it would return a message stating smart glass is connected & pop the achievement. This is the same unlock rule as it was originally when the game was first released.

Allgorhythm said:Whatever the policy might be, they could also just auto unlock it for anyone who boots up the game, which would be much easier for everyone concerned.

Skinfasst said:Not too long ago, Microsoft chastised Xitilon for making unlock rules simpler. As easy as Xitilon's achievements became, they stopped short of unlocking by simply launching the game. It would send the wrong message if Microsoft took a page out of Xitilon's book &, even worse, outdid Xitilon with the simplicity of the unlocks.

We're on the same page here. The original achievement was pretty simple to unlock. A small addition would restore the achievement & retain the same degree of simplicity as the original. Microsoft obviously expects the game to receive significant play-time so the update would be worth its while.

Allgorhythm said:Any achievement that is no longer obtainable due to server closures or niche apps like this should have their requirements changed. It’s not fair to gamers who get the games later.

Allgorhythm said:Came here to say this.

Allgorhythm said:I would say they could modify it to unlock if you open the game pass app or something similar

wildwest08 said:Microsoft Studios would still be guilty of violating the same policy for which Microsoft XBox chastised Xitilon. They would have to retain the same unlock condition: connect to XBox 360 smart glass. Since the XBox 360 smart glass doesn’t exist in the real world any more, the logical alternative is to design a game world version.

The achievement would be simple to unlock once the player discovered the smart glass tablet or other device & selected the Fable Anniversary connection. The lack of difficulty would be equivalent to the achievement & it would be in lock step with Microsoft achievement policy.

I just read Gears 5 removing Map Builder, two achievements will auto-unlock. If Microsoft Studios can auto-unlock achievements in Gears 5, they should be able to do likewise with Fable Anniversary. Accordingly, I reverse my position where I suggested a virtual SmartGlass app be used to make the See the Future achievement obtainable & now hitch my wagon behind those advocating for an auto-unlock.