Fair enough. I also imagine there may be some money exchanging hands to allow for an 'exclusivity period' for mods on Xbox before PS4, or something like that. Often when a developer seems to 'prefer' Sony or Microsoft, there tends to be a financial component to the decision.

According to Pete Hines, Bethesda isn't doing an exclusivity deal with any one.

At a guess I would suggest, support. Microsoft is a very large company, that is used to providing technical* support when its in their best interests. Thats excluding the possibility of Microsoft just writing a check.

*By support I am referring to both porting it onto xbox and pc. Honestly, if you had to choose between letting the OS manufacturer help support your product, and help with their console, or go the other route, which would you choose?

Sony was dragging it's heels approving mod access.

Microsoft dived straight in with approval.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/technow/games/fallout-4-mods-will-be-on-ps4-if-sony-agrees-338764.html

As well as the stronger technical compatibility,

I think Bethesda would want to start with the partner that was showing a bit more enthusiasm.

I agree with every ones opinion, I have ben waiting for fallout 4 for like forever and have played the prior two fallouts on xbox 360 they played better than ps3, I want the best experience and im playing it on xbox one I do have a ps4 but not taking a chance...we got about a month to go! Nov 10!

The original Xbox saved the company. There would be no Bethesda Softworks had it not been for the Xbox release of Morrowind.

I dont think thats the case; i mean, if anything from what ive read - morrowind merely secured todds position, not bethesdas standing as a company itself - although the games he went on to direct became basically the top western RPGS on the market

After reading into what people have said though - i agree with the idea that their strong friendship began at morrowing and microsofts guidance

todd himself may like the ebox but that is personal opinion like everyone has. he has to pick one. otherwise the ps3 was a nightmare to code for well the xbox 360 was much easier so their was less bugs. times exclusives however was microsoft saying. "hey here is some money give it to us first" beth did give it to xbox because they like them it was because they got paid to do it. ultimatly microsoft seems like the company that just works with devolers better thus the seemingly biased interactions

Who knows what direction the company would have gone in going from Morrowind to Oblivion had Todd Howard not been the lead.

I'd also say just because they had so many problems with F3 and NV on ps3.. (did skyrim have any problems on ps3?.. I don't remember.) However, I don't think they have had any problems programming for either console this generation. I doubt they really favor one company over the other because Bethesda's main goal is to sell as many copies of the game as possible.. Seems likely that they'd actually favor whichever format reaches the most people.

Skyrim was a piece of crap on PS3.

As for mods i think MS will get a backlash on this as soon as those 10 top mods articles appears...with the typical answer being we cant allow script extender on our console.

I think you got it backwards. Skyrim on PS3 was infamous for having numerous problems. I didn't hear too many complaints about the Fallout games on PS3, besides NV just being buggy in general.

I don't know what the Xbox version of Morrowind did or didn't do for the company, but Morrowind itself was definitely a last effort Hail Mary kind of thing. At least that's how they talk about it. They were in a really bad way in the years preceding Morrowind.

In that post i was referring to Todd Howard rather than bethesda as a company; lets face it, if he never made lead dev or one of his earlier games flopped, TES would be abit different and its debateable if fallout would be here atall in this state.
(I understand theres a plethora of devs, artists ect who also worked on it and for the most - its what they make ingame.. But Todd did drive at the games and gave a genralist idea, alebit changed along the way)

+1