Just wondering if I'll be able to activate this on Steam, even though it comes with a physical copy of the game.

Yes always uses steam to create information on the machine to feed

Almost certainly. Every Bethesda-published game since Fallout: New Vegas has required Steam activation, so unless they're planning to set up their own service, I don't see why this would be any different.

the game is available from amazon, best buy, & gamestop.

That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure if their new Bethesda.net system was going to exclusively deal with digital distrubution of their games, like Origin for EA, or if it was more a social/modding thing.

I have a question too:

If I pre-order the Pipboy pc edition, will I be able to play the game as soon as it releases on steam? Like with a code or something that i get via email. I dont want to wait for my fallout fix a few days longer just because the delivery got delayed....

Can't ship a game via electricity

Think question was more if he could download the game from steam and enter his code before the collector edition arrived.

As its an premium product that would be reasonable.