Good points. It would mean someone at Sony and Microsoft are going to get paid to review and ensure mods submitted for console are within capability and content. I can think of worse jobs.

This DOES mean consoles probably won't get the mods that change lighting and redo textures...like Project Nevada and Nevada Skies...but it's the trade off. And it's a step.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, this is a revolutionary step. Mods on consoles. This is ground breaking. We're busting a paradigm here. We MAY begin to see consoles up the ante on their technology to try and bring themselves equal to PC gaming capability, if console mods start to become an industry standard.

It's an exciting time, to be honest.

I've been anolyzing the language being used about this topic and it is contradictory. As far as I can tell at this point, it has not been definitively confirmed that consoles will get a GECK. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-15-fallout-4-pc-mods-can-be-played-and-shared-on-xbox-one-for-free for instance, seems to suggest that mods will be made on the PC and then ported to consoles. But there is a sentence in there that also appears to suggest that the GECK might come to consoles too. I guess we won't know for sure for awhile yet.

For lighting mods, it actually depends. A lot of weather/lighting mods for 3/New Vegas and Skyrim boast "zero performance loss", mostly because a lot of them only change the weather/lighting settings already used by the engine to create more colorful scenes. Interior Lighting Overhaul for New Vegas, and Pure Weather/Realistic Lighting Overhaul for Skyrim come to mind. They did say that they didn't want to have too much oversight into what mods can get on consoles, and that it would still be possible to wildly break your game.

I'm 99% sure the consoles won't be getting their own versions of the GECK. Especially not one for use on a console; keyboard and mouse is pretty much essential for anything in the GECK. What we will see is a lot more console-related functionality on the GECK.

In this interview with Todd Howard (https://youtu.be/bNgEO6ehqp0?t=360) he clarifies very explicitly that the Creation Kit for FO4 will be on PC only "the Creation Kit's just a PC thing". When he talks about "the Xbox One part of that" I'm pretty sure he's talking about the infrastructure/tools/software for Xbox One owners to locate, download and install mods.

[edit]

I'll trust a first person statement from Bethesda before a second (or even third/fourth/fifth) person summary by a journalist

This 100%. Im buying this game because I think it looks great on its own merits. Once I playthrough the game I will then look for mods that may slightly tweak things I didnt like, such as UI or leveling speed. Once the modding tools are released I will have played enough of the vanilla game that I will go mod wild.

Its also my opinion that they intentionally wait to release the tools for the reason they want everyone to play their game their way. If they wanted too a company like them would have no trouble sending the tools out with the main game. I dont blame them for that decision if it is true.

It also means any mod that doesn't pass their censor is out too. I'm not talking sleazy six mods but mods like New Vegas Bounties (FONV) or Interesting NPC's (Skyrim). The former having harsh language. And the latter having some companions that deal with advlt subjects. Both those mods are huge, popular and very good. Be a shame for console players to miss out.

And what about gore/blood mods? Combat mods? Face and body texture mods? Or companion mods? I wonder what the censors would make of a companion like Russell (from FONV)?

I can't image any scenario where console players would have the same modding capabilities as PC players. There's just no way MS or Sony is gonna devote that much attention to it unless it earns revenue.

PS: Thinking about it... I suppose if Beth could prove that mods would drive sales of FO4 on the console, driving sales of consoles (forcing players still on old hardware to upgrade) then maybe. But I still have doubts. I think the console mods are gonna be a few well established mods. Right now, Skyrim has like 35k mods available. How would that work on consoles?

Every modders plays the game to death before writing code. You have too. You have to know the game front and back else your mod would fail. Texture modders for example; they have to know, or see rather, every area of the game. That alone will take a few play-throughs. Plus I think it good we all play the vanilla game first. Because once we all have 200 mods running, we sort of forget about the basic game.

Short answer: I believe their timing for the release of both the game and creation kit/mod support is a result of good project management.

Long Answer:
In the development of a game there is a lull of development time. When the game's content is being reviewed (Likely occurring now). During this time nothing more can be added to the game (content-wise). Companies often use this time to work on stuff like DLC. This occasionally results in Day 1 DLC, which people assume is a money grab, but is "usually" just good use of development time (But that's another battle). My guess is this is the time Bethesda has planned to complete work on the creation kit & mod support in general.

Bear in mind, their censor will be looking to approve mods for a game rated (provisionally) 18+ in Europe and M+ in the USA.

I hardly think harsh language or advlt subjects will be a major issue. Only content that would push it into advlt rating in USA would be a real issue - although I gather Bethesda may have an additional policy regarding nudity (none allowed).

In my opinion a more important restriction on console mods than censorship might be third-party utilities. If, as I have heard, consoles are not able to use utilities like script extenders, that is going to prevent consoles from using many of the more sophisticated mods made by the community.

I agree with the title of this thread, get it right first for vanilla game, we don't need more 'Bugthesda' these days infecting the latest FO release. The plug-in for mods can wait in my opinion. Vanilla game needs to "live" first before fiddling for customisation imo.

in the settlement building interface (e3 pres), we see a workshop button.

from this and todd's above statement, i conclude it'll be like this:

pc has the geck, as it's been,

and xbox/ps can upload their _ingame_creations_ (settlements, weapons etc) as a mod.

i suspect it was in large parts new vegas that earned beth that dubious fame. none of their own releases really was _that_ buggy.

(where by _that_, i mean game breaking)

Don't worry, you'll be able to buy a DLC for $29.99 a week after launch. Can that be a mod for you? Horray!

If they were rushing Fallout 4, it probably would have been out by 2013

Their notoriety didn't originate from NV. Each game has had it's issues whether on PC or PS3/360 since Oblivion, maybe Morrowind too but I didn't first play that 'til GoTY was released. Also, Bethesda was in charge of QA on NV, not Obsidian.

The priority is the single player game, and that appears to be in good shape.

How long it takes to develop optional extras is an entirely different matter.

Well, I won't play it on PC so I don't care about anything related to mods, but I think they should take their time and release the game without any major bugs.

In other words. MS paid a lot of money to make sure they get it first. Not that I blame them. Business is business. Sony and MS will be doing this all gen long.

Why would they release a dlc so soon after launch when they had never done so before? Or did I miss an announcement?

Edit- except for horse armor it seems, though they have never repeated that sort of thing, and horse armor was only 2.49, not 29.99 anyway.

This.

Welcome to the forums! ;D

Daggerfall was pretty buggy on release and still is somewhat. It's just mostly bugged side quests that you can just ignore and get a new one just as easily.

I hope we get the mods tools soon so we can get the inevitable unofficial patch underway.

You literally couldn't complete Daggerfall's main quest before the game got patched. Bethesda's made buggy games for as long as they've been making ARPGs, but each launch gets more and more stable. Morrowind was less buggy than Daggerfall, Oblivion less than Morrowind, Fallout 3 less than Oblivion, and Skyrim had the most solid launch to date. Let's hope that trend continues.

I forgot to mention script extenders.

I'm sure approved mods will have to be put through an edit program similar to what we have for FO3 and NV to ensure safety.

Well, no, anyone can easily see that they will want to mod the lousy vanilla character aesthetics. This has been standard for BGS games so there is no need to actually play the game to know such a thing, especially now that we have seen actual in-game character aesthetics, both PC and NPC.

I can easily state that the various outfits/armors will also need modding because of past BGS games and have a 99% certainty that I am right without playing the game itself.

Experience is very helpful, after all, if depressing.