A hint at fallout 4 on next gen? : Fallout Series Discussion

» Wed May 02, 2012 9:00 pm

nah by 2014 next gen will be fully underway and I personally hope fallout 4 is a launch title for it.

No it won't, the current gen is only half way through it's life.

» Thu May 03, 2012 1:23 am

No it won't, the current gen is only half way through it's life.

Current gen at least in consoles will be surpassed. I wouldn't be surprised if new ones other than Nintendo's came out in the 14-15 range with announcement either this year or the next. Sony's already denied a PS4 announcement however that doesn't mean it's not being developed.

If you mean the shelf/support life of this generations consoles then yes. Sony's committed a large timeframe to PS3(Somewhere around the 10 years mark) and Microsoft seem to as well going by how years old hardware profit them. As a small PC/360 dev I can't complain either.

» Wed May 02, 2012 7:30 pm

I'm a PC gamer, so who cares?

I WANT MY FALLOUT 4!!!

» Wed May 02, 2012 5:07 pm

No it won't, the current gen is only half way through it's life.

Maybe if you believe what Sony and MS are telling you. If you pay attention to what they're doing (MS is already distributing their CPU chipsets in devkits and Sony is already developing the next PlayStation with a new AMD GPU), you can see that things are a little further along than that. 360 and PS3 have been out for 6+ and 5+ years, respectively. If you really think it's going to be 2016-17 when the next gen comes out, I've got some real estate to sell you...

Really, Sony and Microsoft can't afford to wait. If they give WiiU a 2 year head start, there is going to be a lot of ground to make up. Not to mention that the GPUs of the two are becoming rapidly dated. 4-5 years from now they'll be downright antiquated.

And when a company says they want their console to have a lifespan of X years, that doesn't mean they won't release another console until that time. PS2 is a prime example of this; only in the past couple years did game development for it effectively cease, but PS3 has been out since 2006. Sony will tell you PS2 has had a lifespan of over 10 years. There can and will be overlap.

I'd bet a fair sum we'll see announcements for XBOX 720 (or whatever it'll be called) and PS4 in 2013 with a release in late 2014. That'll give PS3/360 and 8/9 year runs as flagship consoles, which is very healthy, among the longest ever.

Now if you look at the timetables for BGS-developed titles (Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim at about 30-36 months average) and project a new AAA title accordingly, that would put the a potential FO4 release in the same Q3/4 2014 window.

One could think that FO4 might be a swan song release for the current gen, but if devkits are already being assembled/distributed, it would make more sense as a big splash launch release.

» Thu May 03, 2012 2:25 am

Mhm. It's important to seperate the different branches within Zenimax's Beth Softworks(Softworks is the publishing arm of Zenimax) from internal studios like BGS, and bought studios incorporated like iD or machine, though.

Otherwise you get situations where developers are getting blamed for what publishers/lawyers do.

Or Publishers getting mixed up for dev studios

i.e. Interplay became a monolithic corporation that failed and now is a shady aftermath of a once past. Either way they in no way are connected to FO. The people who made it are.

Or BGS devs being blamed for the Beth Softworks Mojang lawsuit when they were enforcing their IP so as to not get it revoked( U.S. IP system, along with patent system is a whole other topic.)

Yea I appreciate those game weren't created by BGS, my point as a publisher it's unlikely they will be working on two games from the same game simultaneously.