http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1274353-bethesda-bringing-mods-to-consoles/

As my post got lost on the last page:

It won't happen.

The Creation Kit is the actual software the devs used to make the game, it's so advanced that it would stay PC only. If the CK is PC only, then only PC users will be able to make mods anyway.

And the fact that mods are so varied and unique. Some require you to enable some form of Archive Invalidation, some editing the INI files, modifying the files yourself. What happens if two mods overlap? Conflicts? Mods that accidentally break saves? It's just, unfortunately, not feasible for Bethesda, Microsoft or Sony to out time, money and effort into this.

Of course you can never make mods on consoles or edit them but making them available is a possibility although i don't think that's going to happen... It would take a lot of work to make it happen and not only a lot of work from Bethesda but also from the mod makers because obviously Bethesda can't make all mods compatible with each other that is too much work for them, so people who make mods would also have to participate.

I'd love to see user-made mods on consoles, but there are number of important hurdles to consider, and I think some of the frequent examples are shaky at best.

It's worth remembering that mods on Bethesda's games are integrated with the whole. When you have maps on an FPS like Halo or Unreal Tournament 3 you are dealing with content that is individual and contained. That is, one map never needs to know what another map is doing, and you never have to load more than one map at a time. With Skyrim, and Bethesda's other recent titles, this isn't the case. Every mod is an extra ball to be juggled, with none being taken out to compensate.

Anyone who has had difficulty getting a game to run on their computer has encountered the problems of this platform's flexibility, but the benefit is the potential to juggle more balls. Some computers can't handle certain mods, and each computer has a limit to what it can juggle. On the XBox 360 and PS3 this number is largely fixed, and when mods are limited to official content the developers and the console manufacturer have a lot of control over how many balls the system is given.

I see no reason not to give console owners the option to gauge this themselves, but I can certainly see why Sony and Microsoft would be concerned. Juggle too many balls and the system could overheat or break down, and if the rate of failures increases gamers aren't going to blame too many mods, they're going to blame Sony and Microsoft. Personally I think modding could easily be the next big thing on consoles, equal to the motion control jostling we've seen with the current generation and internet access we saw on the last one. However it likely requires a new system developed from the ground up with this in mind. If Bethesda can convince them with this generation that's fantastic, but I think it's more realistic for players to make their interest heard now, while their expectations are placed on the next generation systems.

An aside concerning the editor, with Morrowind and Oblivion/Fallout, and I assume Skyrim, the editor is a Windows application. That is, it isn't software that runs in Windows, it is software developed around Windows architecture. Porting it would be extremely difficult as even the XBox 360 lacks much of the basic structure it relies upon.

Also, a disclaimer. Moderators are volunteers and nothing we say should be considered official. These are my own personal opinions, they do not necessary reflect Bethesda's.

I personally wouldn't use them, but if they were allowed that would be pretty cool.

Please do not discuss modifying consoles. This is not a permissible topic on the forums.

Also, discussing forum moderation within a thread like this is off topic. If you have any comments you're welcome to PM me.

People who want Mods on a console have never played this game with mods. By this I mean without all the tools to install and manage mods and an editor, putting a mod on this game is just asking for game breaking issues that can't be fixed.

Bottom line, if you want to use Mods, get a PC.

The only possibility is if Bethesda packaged some of the most popular mods into a DLC/Expansion style thing. Which would involve money, and since they're free on PC and not actually made by Bethesda, would be a huge, complicated issue.

IMO you guys are getting your hopes up over something that just obviously isn't going to happen.

Assuming Bethesda could sort out the legal/commercial elements with Sony and Microsoft, then I think this would be a great move on their part. Obviously it's far more feasible to have mods on PC rather than distributable over Live or PSN, so Bethesda would either need to arrange for a dedicated group of modders to create Xbox- or PS3-specific mods and ensure they're compatible with each other, or they'd need to put in a huge amount of work themselves to ensure that mods were all compatible with each other and the hardware.

Either way I don't think it's quite feasible for the full list of PC mods to just be made available to Live and PSN. That would create too many technical issues - like graphics/texture mods that the PS3 and Xbox can't physically support - or would rely on console users to actually read the fine print as to whether one mod is compatible with another. The latter seems like too big a risk, seeing how much confusion it would cause among users (not to mention rage when their mods aren't compatible after all).

In short, it's a real pickle... I hope Bethesda can figure something out, but I definitely wouldn't count on it. It just seems a bit of a shame that consoles are stuck with so much less potential content.

As much as I hate to say it; mods aren't possible on consoles, not good mods anyway, the game data is stored on a disk for consoles and consoles aren't equipped with disc burners to change any files.

I think this is the best route to take - and it isn't unprecedented for a developer to bring a talented modding group on board, although it certainly is rare. While this wouldn't really bring user-made content to consoles I think it would be a feasible middle ground given the current security and hardware restrictions Skyrim has to contend with.


Quite a lot of data is stored on HDs at this point, and it's worth pointing out that these systems didn't have much trouble with the DLC released for Oblivion, FO3, and FONV. If mods weren't possible the official DLC wouldn't work.

Usermade content is unfilitered, and neither console has a good mechanic in place to allow them unless created with an integrated in-game editor (which generally produce easily digestible levels that don't have the potential problems Skyrim mods would have).

Why would you have mods on a Console? Personaly I'd rather have console commands which is actualy possible on a console, though the only reason I'd do console cammands is so I can stage epic battles.

I'm just waiting for someone else to tout the complete stupidity that was posted near the end of the last thread about consoles making up 90% of sales..

That being said, I don't see why this discussion even needs to continue, both sides have been discussed, and the obstacles to the arrival of mods on consoles have been made abundantly apparent.

I would love to see some mods on console.

I'm really hoping it does. Surely it can't be too complicated to take note of the most popular mods and upload them to the xbox marketplace or PS3 equivelant, maybe even charge a small amount to keep the service running if needed, but not to charge an amount for profit as that would be kinda bad if it was originally a mod.

They'd have to charge quite a bit most likely when you consider they'd have to pay to put the content on consoles, which in turn would mean they'd have to purchase a licence from the creator to be secure from a legal perspective.

I think it would be extremely complicated.

Choosing popular mods isn't necessarily straight forward. Often if an idea is popular there will be multiple popular mods that have their own take on it, which not only muddles the selection process but invites a backlash of "Why did you choose X instead of Y?"

One mods are selected they need to be thoroughly tested, not only by themselves but with other available mods to make sure there aren't conflicts. The more mods there are, the more time-consuming this step becomes.

And to top it off there are legal and financial issues to hammer out.

A contest would bypass some problems: Bethesda could specify the types of mods they are interested in; they only have to review submissions, which greatly narrows what they need to consider; the financial guidelines would no doubt be part of the submission process; and Bethesda doesn't have to worry about selecting a mod and finding out the creator doesn't want it released for one reason or another. However it would still be a monumental task to review all of the submissions, make sure the winners didn't steal their content, and then thoroughly test them in preparation for release.

While I would love the Creation Kit / Mods on the consoles, I would agree that it is too complicated. However, it wouldn't bother me if they had simple construction modes allowing us to place objects, edit colors on everything, add existing mobs, name objects, etc, etc just like in Sims and Tony Hawk. I sure miss the glory days of Tony Hawk Underground where there are endless ways to build places in that game.

So for Skyrim, it's simple: just add walls to make new houses (like in Sims,) add clusters of rocks to make caves, change hairstyle, hair colors, clothes, names, etc for existing NPCs and mobs, etc, etc.

I could see future generation consoles receiving their own Creation Kit as well as the ability to download mods as well.

ok some leftover Q's from the last thread


possible if the right people put the alot time into modding skyrim on the ps3/360 they could make it a completely different game... dev time would be a little loger than it would to create new enemys/weapons/balancing on a PC the only difference maybe(we dont know yet as the CK has not been released) would be that you would have to change some scripts to load off the HDD instead of the disk...
its all about the time people put into it as long as it is like previous console releses then it would in theory be easily moddable by adding the moddified game to the games resources ....
it may require some small rescripting but according to the bethesda mods are pretty much all drag and drop from the creation kit from what they had found (script extendor is one of them but that could probably be ratified if the coding was right, if it was officialy supported there would be a way to cook them that way in the CK but sadly there probably wont be one) but full conversion mods are still possible and adding whole new things to the game are still perfectly possible...


consoles would probably get their own subforums but people would still flood the PC side with massive ammounts of questions....
its sad to say but most people dont care where they post things and so forums will always be cluttered like that especialy big ones...
and yes script extender woulnt work on consoles but it may be able to be recoded to work on consoles but it would require some illegal actions in the eyes of sony and maybe bethesda...

and like said in this continuation thread by one of the mods in that funny little annalogy consoles can only juggle so many balls and the manufacturer has control of that the (the ps3 would actualy out perfrom the x360 in this matter) limiting what kind of mods could be ran....

however i will inform you all that it is right now impossible to legally mod skyrim on the ps3/360...

that however could be fixed by bethesda if they were to add an official mod mannager to the game but it would still be limited....

this post is not an endorsemant of hacking PS3s/X360s it is merely information that should be out there and some of it has been confirmed by devs in interviews...

This is a very well thought out and written post.

This could work, but it would also have to be developed from scratch. The convenient thing about the editors since Morrowind was that we got the same tool the devs used, with only some minor tweaks and restrictions. This meant that Bethesda just needed to develop the tool they wanted to use, rather than taking user-functionality into account or making it work on multiple platforms.


I suspect you're correct. It won't be long before consoles are basically just propitiatory computers with contained software, rather like the iphone and ipad and their app store. While I'm personally not a fan of this sort of restriction, as long as more flexible alternatives exist I don't see why the two can't coexist together. I'd happy own a less robust PC and game on a console if they'd let me use a keyboard and mouse.


Thanks, it has been refined by many retellings :hehe:

only one game i know of one consoles that lets you use a keyboard and mouse and thats UT3 it also has mod support but like you said what the PS3 can do is constrained and that is due the the fact that you dont have direct access to the resource data like a PC dose.... still fun though and a ton of mods for the PS3... it really showed that you can have an open mod community on a console.... microsoft didnt allow these mods on 360 though...

cant wait to see the CK for skyrim though hopefully if bethesda can make a deal with the console companies (or atleast one of them) maybe we could get mods on consoles and have a special mode in the CK for creating console content....

It's difficult, obviously. Possible? From what I understand, yes.

Bottom line: if it can be done, it ought to be done. Whether mods should be on consoles is not up for debate; arguing whether they should or should not be on consoles is about as intelligent as arguing whether fast travel, vampirism or DLC should be in the game: if you don't want it, don't use it. I'm sure there are those (like occasionally myself) who would play a game even on PC and prefer it vanilla, however few in number they are (I even consider using the tilde key cheating...on most occasions :toughninja: ). If it is possible, then yes, all gamers should be given the same game with the same opportunity; there should be no favoritism, especially since 90% of the playerbase is on consoles, according to http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109378-Bethesda-Wants-Skyrim-Mods-on-Consoles. Moreover, it's a mechanically simple matter in all things but security (that is, the legality of information sharing and the possibility of destroying your whole console if these sensitive things are done incorrectly). Again, http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3076322, these things could be done on consoles with games as old as Morrowind, and therefore even the previous console generation.

I think Beth ought to do their best to bring mods to consoles :celebration: It will only strengthen their community and the love of their fans.

would it be awsome? yes
will it happen? probably not

what they could do is take the best PC mods and make them free DLC on xbox/ps3