Fair points ^^ ill answer the quisitive bits in them

1) well, considering this is ther first next gen and prior - im pretty sure the 360 was nothing like a PC (maybe moreso than the ps3 but still far from it)

2) I was born of the generation that missed the likes of morrowind, bloodmoon ect. My first taste of bethesda was oblivion (on ps3, which.. Didnt go down great) so i kinda missed the "yh me and ms are best of buds" from Todd. Hence the question.

3) Basically a repeat of 2; this is the product of what happens when 2 companies work together anyway

Yeah, i assumed as much with MS having a decent standing in computer software.
Last-gen wasnt built with ease of porting in mind, however current-gen was. Even if its a mess around - the ps4 was too designed inline to be more pc-like in terms of harddrive, capabilities, ect.

Im unaware if the PS4 uses cloud computing either? I mean, the xbox does and crackdown 3 demonstrated it, needing be bandwith of a good 23 X1's to compute all the destruction in real time.. Im unsure but hopeful this will give us a more visually enhanced game or, in turn, make the mods more easily compatible.

Actually, he did. (PC aside - being most devs obvious choice of fave due to the flexibility and no need to port for it) He explicitly stated that he prefers xbox 360 to ps3.. This was in the oblivion - fallout 3 era, mind you. That may simply be because of the partnership between bethesda and MS.. ontop of that, thats his view not the companys.. But out of the consoles? Its a clear fave for him. Even by how biased he is in talking about the two consoles its pretty noticable

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess there some additional money involved (that we will never be able to verify).

It's no secret that M$ is pulling out all the stops this holiday season to try and gain back some ground on PS4 and dozens of bundle varieties being available for Black Friday seems to be a major part of that strategy.

Bethesda also has quite a long history of working with M$ where their relationship with Sony has been stand offish at best.

"im pretty sure the 360 was nothing like a PC" - "Nothing like a PC" isn't completely accurate, but yes, the 360 was definitely a different animal from a PC when compared to an Xbox One. That said, the PS3 was even further from operating like a PC - something they changed (dare I say "fixed" ;D ) with the PS4.

"I was born of the generation that missed the likes of morrowind, bloodmoon ect." - I missed it too, that's why I wasn't sure of the specific title.

"Basically a repeat of 2; this is the product of what happens when 2 companies work together anyway" - Related points, although they can exist without the other being true: MS could have worked with Bethesda in the past and chosen not to cooperate with them on the Xbox One. PS could...disregarded Bethesda in the past, but changed their tune for the PS4 and offered substantial support on porting it over first. So, absolutely related/a byproduct of the same action, but two different points.

At any rate, I wasn't really offering "personal" reasons as to why Bethesda prefers XB over the PS. The reason why I said you weren't listening is because Bethesda has come out and said these are the reasons why through interviews with Todd and Pete.

i remember Todd Howard referring to playing on the Xbox, not the Playstation.

1) Todd Howard prefers consoles to PC

2) Bethesda's relationship with Microsoft dates back to Morrowind.

First point is speculation; second is fact.

You guys seriously think that Todd Howard's console preference has a role in this? I'm guessing Zenimax has much more to do with M$ deals than anyone related to the Dev team.

• M$ likely offered a good deal to secure this bundle.
• Certainly hasn't been stated that it's "exclusive" to M$. (not impossible PS4 bundle will show up...tho not likely).
• Beth is not a JPN based studio and does not make JPN RPGs. (Sony has snubbed western RPG makers in the past).
• Bethesda products on Sony consoles have not been stellar. (Sony has a legit reason to potentially hold a grudge).

Nah, not really. Just seemed like a good explanation as any, but you've got solid points.

I bet Zenimax has nothing to do with it.

another thing is if there is anyone at head of XboX that plays games its phil spencer i find it hard too believe that the only reason for mods coming this time is just Tech todd has hounding MS for years for console mods and head of xbox is a legit gamer and mods were announced in there press con.

tech helps but its not only reason for it happening. im sure phil got behind it aswell.

"not calling anyone out or anything just thing that thought people would brought up buy now"

They're commonly the scapegoat for some folk when Bethesda does something corporately questionable, because my precious Bethesda would never do something like that!

Possibly, but a bundle deal is a huge decision in terms of distribution (so it's a publisher issue) so I'd bet they had some say so.

I fail to see how this bundle is a questionable move that somehow needs a scapegoat to "blame" something on. I personally think it's a brilliant marketing move by Bethesda.

Not the Xbox bundle in particular, just speaking in general.

Ha. Clever Microsoft with that bundle.

And there's nothing exclusive there, it's just the game.

And the Fallout 3 copy - a 7 year old game after all - PS4 could't put on a bundle as they are not backwards compatible.

Expect Microsoft to market the pants out of this...

(if they had included a Pip-Boy, then WWIII would have broken out...)

Just to clear things up mods ARE coming to PS4, but the X1 will be getting them first.

Proof:
"We’re especially excited these same mods will then be coming to Xbox One, and then PlayStation 4." From Bethesda.net

And a response I got from Pete on twitter.

https://mobile.twitter.com/OreicReynier/status/641663399391133696

I'm glad I don't have money riding on my bet. I was thinking of BGS and Microsoft negotiating a deal with each other, and then bringing Bethesda Softworks onboard to seal the deal, but maybe BGS isn't involved.

One thing to note is that Xbox had a policy around the time of Skyrim that stated that any DLC or addon for a game that was multiplatform, with Xbox360 being one of those platforms, had to either be released first on the Xbox360 or concurrently with all other releases. This is one of the reasons that all Skyrim DLCs were Xbox exclusives for a month first. Kinect support for Skyrim was also strong-armed by Xbox, and it was possible to see in interviews that Todd Howard wasn't terribly enthused about it.

Keep in mind that good past relationship or not, there are all kinds of contract clauses and implied concessions that go into the design choices made by Zenimax (and Zenimax, as the publisher, is the one calling the shots on things like release dates and bundles).

In terms of the last gen (360 and PS3) the 360 was much easier to work with, being basically a spec-locked PC. The PS3 had a special processor and other "features" that made it a pain to work with, especially if you were going multi-platform. In terms of this gen (Xbox One and PS4), MS is working with Beth to get mods on the console (part of their new PC&Console push), while Sony is still in the "in talks" phase.

But for Beth, I think it's also just a history of MS more proactively working with Beth on the TES games since Morrowind.

Funny to see butthurt breaking out on youtube and other places about this from some of the PS4 crowd.

I think it could be conceived of that Bethesda has a Microsoft preference.

But I think the technical grounds for starting mods on Xbox, the Fallout 3 Backwards Compatibility offer and the Microsoft bundle, are just circumstance and Microsoft making the most of the BC feature difference. Nothing is actually being withheld.

i find it extremely ironic and funny because most of this PS4 crowd is directing there dissatisfaction at MS/Beth instead of Sony who really is the one to blame as usual

i loss count on how many free passes sony gets from there product buyers its quite shocking really.....

Why preference for Xbox > Playstation > PC?

Off the top of my head, I think about 90% of Fallout 3's sales were on the console (from information in the public domain, which wasn't comprehensive). Of that, I recall the split as being about 65/35 between the Xbox and Playstation.

I think (could be wrong) that the Xbox and PC are pretty similar under the proverbial hood, so if I was making the game, I'd get it up to scratch on the Xbox first, and then modify it for PC (because the changes would be minor), and then port it to the Playstation because it's the most different.

I don't think Todd's personal preference is a factor here - just economics and process efficiency.

Oblivion was really good (from what I've seen, better performance and load times than on 360). But that was ported by a different company a year after the original release. Sadly we didn't get the rest of the DLC, but we did at least get KoTN for free and SI eventually in the GOTY version.

I personally didn't have any trouble with Fallout 3 either, but thankfully I'd switched to PC by the time Skyrim came along...

I'm really curious to see how mods will pan out for Xbox One, i.e. what kinds of limitations there will be on what kinds of mods will be made available to console users, as they have fixed hardware resources and limited access to modify game files (i.e. for things like FOSE-based mods). Overall I am excited about the idea of mods being available at all for consoles (I want to make a custom textured outfit for my brother), and I also hear that mods will coming to PS4 as well?

Just wait until Bethesda get the sale figures in for Fallout 4.

Most third party games are selling over DOUBLE the amount on PS4 than Xbox One.

Activision also had a long standing stance with Microsoft/Xbox when it came to early exclusive Call of Duty content. Now they became turncoats and went running to PS4 earlier this year when the last CoD game sold considerably more on PS4.

From the sound of it (at least as far as the mods thing goes) it's less about Bethesda's supposed preference for Microsoft, and more... "why does Microsoft like Bethesda more than Sony does?" From my understanding, Bethesda has been pretty clear about wanting mods on both systems. If anyone's been dragging their feet on this, I think it's Sony.