I have been continuing to check in on how Fallout games are performing almost a month after the massive launch of Amazon’s Fallout TV series and various franchise sales. Fallout 4 remains a top 10 Steam game with over 100,000 concurrent players a night. Fallout 76 has maintained player numbers that are 400% more than they were previously. Hell, even Fallout New Vegas is still doing six times its old averages as we speak.
There are behind the scenes reports that Microsoft is trying to find one of its many studios to start work on a Fallout game, given this clear surge in interest and reiteration of just how valuable this IP is to them. It may be one of the most valuable franchises Microsoft now owns, in fact, perhaps below Call of Duty but quite honestly above something like Halo in the current era.
The problem is that there is no easy answer here at all. There are a number of factors and realities that have to be faced with this situation.
Bethesda really cannot meaningfully speed up their timeline for Fallout 5, and they are definitely going to be the only ones to make an actual Fallout 5. They are still partially working on things like the Starfield expansion, but hugely focused on getting Elder Scroll VI out in the next few years. Fallout 5 would be many years past that, and we’re talking 7-10 years for Fallout 5 not being an unreasonable timeline to assume.
The big “obvious” choice to make some sort of intermediate Fallout spin-off game would be Obsidian, who is about to release Avowed this year, though we have no idea how that will perform. Then, they’re set to make Outer Worlds 2 after that. To make this happen Microsoft would have to essentially demand they not do that, or even stop production, and switch to a Fallout game, which may be a bit more heavy-handed than they want to be.
Other developers could work on a game, but they would be untested in the franchise and the problem is with no Fallout game in development right now, it would still be many years until one arrived in whatever form it would take. Someone should have been cooking this already and no one has been.
Fallout 76 is the “ongoing” Fallout experience that Microsoft can utilize, but even with a recent surge, it remains to be seen what retention might be in the long term. And despite yearly improvements we’ve seen, this is a game that’s approaching six years old and Bethesda titles already come across as somewhat dated at baseline. It’s only getting older from here.
Remakes and remasters can only get you so far, and if they are the quality of the recent updates to Fallout 4, we can’t really expect all that much from that tactic.
It feels like the best case scenario is Microsoft assigning a dev, Obsidian or otherwise, to make a Fallout spin-off but the results are unknown and the timeline would still be years away if one is not even in the conceptual stage yet.
If Bethesda can pick up its development pace and not leave five year gaps in between its big games, that would help, but with Elder Scrolls VI coming and Starfield taking up all their time the previous five years, there’s just no way Fallout 5 is anywhere even remotely close to release.
I don’t know the answer here and I don’t think Microsoft does either. But somewhere along the way it’s clear that Fallout should not have been put on ice and left to just periodic 76 updates. We’ll see what might be able to change.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
