After years of wishing and hoping, a new Banjo-Kazooie game could finally be on the way.
According to known insider NateDrake on the ResetEra forums, a Banjo-Kazooie game is in development at Microsoft. He didn’t give much in terms of details of the project aside from it not being officially greenlit until “last year”.
“It’s still an active project, but it didn’t get the green light until early last year,” NateDrake said. “There is a lot to do and development can change a lot (abandoned ideas, internal reboots, etc.).”
Insider Gaming has yet to independently verify NateDrake’s claims of a new Banjo-Kazooie game. However, the insider has been accurate in the past with their information, including recently regarding the new Arkane Lyon game being announced at The Game Awards (Blade) as well as a new F-Zero game (F-Zero 99).
To add fuel to the Banjo-Kazooie fire, Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently singled out the franchise and its fans in an interview with Windows Central.
“You’ve seen from our history that we haven’t touched every franchise that people would love us to touch — Banjo fans, I hear you,” he said at the time. “But it is true that, when we find the right team, and the right opportunity, I love going back to revisit stories and characters that we’ve seen previously.”
Banjo-Kazooie hasn’t seen a true main console entry since 2000’s Banjo-Tooie. There were a couple of handheld games in the early-mid 2000s — Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty’s Revenge and Banjo-Pilot for the Game Boy Advance. There was also Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in 2008, but that game was such a deviation from the first two games, that it’s regarded more of a spin-off than anything else.
What do you think of a potential new Banjo-Kazooie game? For more Insider Gaming, read about the new Escape From Tarkov map and the headaches it’s causing players.
