Rumor: Microsoft Is Making A New Banjo-Kazooie

gameranx.com:

There is a new rumor going around that Banjo-Kazooie is finally, really, staging another comeback.

As shared by Idle Sloth on Twitter, insider NateDrake shared an update they revealed earlier about their being a Banjo-Kazooie game. NateDrake said:

“It’s still an active project, but it didn’t get the green light until early last year. There is a lot to do and development can change a lot (abandoned ideas, internal reboots, etc.)”

NateDrake shared this as an update to an earlier rumor about this game. After some digging around, we believe this rumor dates to June 2022. As shared by HappyGamer, this is what NateDrake said then:

“There is a new project for Banjo-Kazooie in development. We can only guess where and when it will be shown. But as far as I understand, Microsoft gave the green light to production only a few months ago. There was talk about the game at GDC.”

If NateDrake is to be believed, MicrosoftGaming was already talking about a new Banjo-Kazooie game in the middle of 2022. That project has pushed forward but only started development very recently, AKA, the end of 2023. So, Microsoft under Phil has been seriously considering making this game for some time now, but didn’t believe they could do it until very recently.

Now, Idle Sloth alluded to a quote from Phil Spencer in a recent interview. Let’s go back to the interview itself to figure out what it all means.

Phil Spencer was interviewed by Jez Corden for Windows Central just early last month. Phil talked at length about the company’s plans in bringing back old IP, as opposed to the recent announcements of brand new video game IP such as Avowed and South of Midnight. Here’s what Phil said:

“You’ve seen from our history that we haven’t touched every franchise