When Bethesda began development of its next highly-anticipated title, Fallout 4, it started off by bringing The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim to Xbox One to test the waters of the new generation of console hardware, according to game director Todd Howard.
“The first thing we did was port Skyrim to Xbox One,” Howard told Game Informer before adding, “Don’t get your hopes up yet,” in an attempt to alleviate any speculation that Bethesda will release Skyrim on the current generation on consoles, namely PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Fallout 4 will be released next week on Nov. 10 on PS4 and Xbox One, alongside a PC version. Bethesda porting Skyrim to Xbox One was done to better understand the new console’s hardware before they could work to bring Fallout 4, which had already started development towards the end of Skyrim’s development, to current-gen consoles.
Skyrim was released in Nov. of 2011, which means Fallout 4 has been in development since at least that date. This should not come as a surprise, given that Bethesda’s game previous to Skyrim, Fallout 3, was released in 2008. Howard also says that Bethesda did not want to release Fallout 4 as a launch title for PS4 and Xbox One, both of which were released in 2013. Skyrim and its predecessor, Morrowind, were both released within their respective console generation’s launch window period.
As noted above, Fallout 4 will be released on Nov. 10 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, the latter two of which will support mods, which Bethesda says must be free to download, per Fallout 4’s EULA.
Source: Game Informer