Can the reason Bethesda has not announced Fallout 4 be, that they are waiting to see how Wasteland 2 does sales wise?

I mean do we even know how far along they are in development for Fallout 4?

Hypothetically speaking if Bethesda sees that people are interested in old school rpg's. They may return Fallout to it's old school roots? Maybe not with FO4 depending on its development stage, but for future Fallouts? Or is that just wishful thinking?

I for one hope that Wasteland 2 proves successful. Wasteland 2, Project Eternity and Torment are the only games I've ever pledged money for. I mean the developers of those games know what most people want in an rpg.

I hope their success shows that not everyone plays COD; and brings back rpg's with great stories.

They undoubtedly started working on their next project shortly after they started major production on Skyrim, so by this time, they are probably very far along, and have their planned game play style mostly set in stone ($1000 betting its going to be 1st and 3rd person view as per the norm), so I REALLY doubt their announcement for their new game has anything to do with Wasteland 2.

Kickstarter projects will not alter mainstream titles in the least. Skyrim sold around 15 million copies. At $60 a pop, consumers paid roughly $900,000,000 to play the game. Not all that money goes back to Bethesda, but it still shows the massive market the game had.

Wasteland 2 has had around $3,000,000 worth of interest. Now, that number will go up when the final product is complete and people who did not fund WL2 can purchase the game, but I don't think we'll see a huge increase. That's the thing with kickstarter, it'll show you how much your target audience is willing to pay. It won't target many outside of that audience, as inXile and Obsidian are marketing their products as appealing to a specific gamer (old school cRPG). And the funding is a fairly decent way to capture total market interest, as funding from interested partners ensures a higher-quality product through stretch goals. It behooves the gamer to fund a project initially instead of waiting to purchase it on completion. As it stands, Wasteland 2 is a factor of 300 behind Skyrim in market value.

Kickstarter is a great thing, and I am excited to play Wasteland II, Project Eternity, and Torment... but we have to realize that the market for such games is very small. We should be thankful Kickstarter exists at all, or else we'd never get a chance to play these kind of games again. It's been a long time coming for us old-school guys. To expect it to change the "AAA" developers, though, is unrealistic.

To say nothing of the fact that Bethesda doesn't work on one project at a time. Development on Skyrim started when Oblivion was in the works, even if it was just preliminary work. Bethesda was likely working on what is presumably Fallout 4 long before Wasteland II was announced.

No, not in the slightest.

What they may be afraid of is the lack of attention Fallout 4 will receive if they just sort of announce it. They want a lot of people to be watching.

This.

Even though I believe Wasteland 2 will do really good, Bethesda simply wont create a game like that style. Its not what they do, and with never having tried a top down type of deep RPG I doubt they would even think of risking (imo) their biggest cash cow on it.

BGS is more likely to try to secure the rights some how and create another Fallout style game with the Wasteland name on it before they would ever make a cRPG.

As a greedy moneygrabbing company Zenimax/Bethesda could try to monetize with the "oldschool boom" by making a game like that (WL2) seeing how the mentioned games gathered millions by just selling a dream. I'd support it wholeheartedly. The KS games have a shoelace budget in comparison to AAA or even AA games. One can only imagine what could be done with a "proper" budget and creative freedom.

No. Never going to happen.

Bethesda acquired the Fallout franchise so that it could develop a second, compatible IP concurrently with The Elder Scrolls. The whole point is to allow them to to amortize their investment in the Gamebryo/Creation engine and their related proprietary resources across two series instead of one. For better or worse, Fallout is now surgically grafted to the TES property.

This is also why we can safely say that Fallout 4 will run on an updated version of Skyrim's Creation engine.

What they MIGHT be willing to do is issue a license to an independent developer-- or, more likely, form their own internal low-budget/hothouse indie studio-- to create a new Fallout cRPG. But any such game won't be a numbered Fallout entry-- it will be a spin-off. It might be regarded as canon, especially if Bethesda develops and/or publishes it.

I'd say the likelihood of this happening is very likely to depend on the success of the currently-pending crop of Kickstarter-funded cRPGs-- but I anticipate they'll be watching Project Eternity more closely than WL2.

I dont think theyll tailor F4 based on sales and reaction to W2. But i do see how they might hold back a bit as not to be in direct competition with it as far as a genres go.

FO may have been the spiritual predecessor at one time, but not as much after the gamesas treatment.
The games will be wildly different as far as gameplay mechanics go, as well as worldbuilding and storytelling.
They dont really need to ride the coatials of W2 because of this.

They will mnake plenty of money, regardless of W2 (undoubtedly) being successful.. There are a lot of players who will buy the next FO for consoles, who dont know about wasteland 2, or simply do not PC game.. Id be curious to see how console sales do in relation to PC sales for the next FO title. I have to think that more console copies will be sold.

More console copies are always sold. That's not even a question at this point. PC gaming is a much less democratized hobby-- while each individual PC gamer will often spend more than the average console gamer, there are many, MANY more console gamers.

The fact that some people think kickstarter cRPGs like Wasteland 2 pose any direct competition threat to Bethesda is, frankly, quaint. As I said before, these games are interesting only in that Bethesda may wish to compete directly with them by releasing their own cRPG as a side project.

Thanks for the informative replies. As for WL2 effecting what type game FO4 will be. I was Hypothetically speaking, I know FO4 will be a fps/rpg hybrid like all of Beth's games are. I was talking more about the future of Fallout remaining as a fps/rpg. if WL2 becomes some type of phenomenon.

lol. The sales of Wasteland 2 will be a fraction toward the amount to Fallout 3. Bethesda would not be waiting to see if Wasteland 2 turns out to bring in a lot of money because it isn't the type of game they want to make. They want to make a fully interactive world that is lifelike.

I did say maybe.

You are right, and that is what I mean (outsourced spinoff) but.... Whether it'd be a spinoff or a numbered title is, at this point, all the same to me. The numbers (or real canon) have shown to bear no meaning, so quality spinoffs would be where the series' future would be, anyway. I've come to care not about canon so much anymore (to a point), because it will be altered and/or disregarded even further. What I care about these days is a fun game that is realistic enough to the setting and the rules and is actually fun to play.

The likelyhood of a faithful spinoff is 1 to a 10,000 or perhaps even ten million, so it's just wishful thinking -- but I like to think for the best even if I expecting the worst. I'm a cynic and a positivist in the same person in that regard.

I have higher hopes on this front. The big studios are watching these Kickstarter indie games to see if they'll bear out their investment, in large part because AAA games are getting so expensive to produce. Independent is by far the biggest growth area. It's smart business for Bethesda to think about forming is own in-house "indie" studios (obviously, the studio wouldn't be truly independent-- which is why I like to refer to them as "hothouse" studios), or, in the alternative, contract and provide resources to existing or new quasi-independent studios.

These studios can both (1) allow them to satisfy the more old-school customer base while extracting some additional return on their IP at low cost and risk, and (2) create something of a "farm league" for young development talent, where they can test new people and eventually move the high performers to their big-budget AAA projects.

Ill be honest, we cant base a percentage of what the ickstarters made in how much the final product will gross them. Wasteland 2 I didnt even no about until after it was funded. If it wasnt for me being on forums I woulda never nown that it was even being done and such. When its finally released on steam, id garner that it will sell VERY well.
Also dont discount the sales that PCs bring in, trust me its ALOT more than most people realize. Unfortuantly steam doesnt release ita figures, but if they ever did it would shock the hell outta most people.
But anyway back to the point, I dont believe Bethesda will alter their gameplay over wasteland 2, BUT I do forsee them stepping around wasteland 2 release date. I dont believe Bethesda will annouce the game in the same time wasteland 2 starts to being released but sometime aftwrwards.
We can pray that they will look at wasteland 2 and see the praise it gets in the focuses that it does and Bethesda takes notes of that.....but I highly doubt it. They didnt take very good notes on fonv so I doubt they would take very good notes on wasteland 2.
Todd Howard in an interview sometime back was asked whats his opionion on the show and demand of gamers now a days wanting great storys and great writings and after an uncomfortable look he goes on to say he wants gamers to wowd by the graphics and his focus is giving them a playground to "live" in. so yaaa, thank God for ickstarters and hopefully Bethesda will let obsidian do more fallouts in the future.
Bethesda games can be fun, but tbeir focus is not the same focus as companys such as inixile and obsidians focuses...and in the end not what my main focuses either.
But then again, Bethesda could wow us and actually learn and the world would be complete in my book.