There were a few leaks that emerged online recently, thanks to the FTC. Failing to redact several emails from Microsoft, we’ve got a peek at what’s happening behind the scenes. However, the court documents also unveiled some initial plans Microsoft had. For instance, it looks like the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, was ready to kill off Bethesda’s Fallout 76. The reason was that this game was not hitting the monthly targeted players for Microsoft to justify keeping Fallout 76 supported.
Thanks to The Gamer, we’re finding out that a recent leaked document from the recent Microsoft and FTC court case focused on Fallout 76. In 2021, Phil Spencer wrote an email to a few individuals asking them about Fallout 76 being put on PlayStation Now. According to Phil Spencer, he wasn’t sure why exactly he was open to the conversation of putting the game on a competitor platform. However, it was clear that they were failing to hit numbers that would keep the game supported. Phil noted that they need to hit 10 million active users per month across all platforms, or they should scrap the game and move on.
This was when Bethesda’s Fallout 76 failed to keep an audience on the title. I’m sure you can all remember the rough launch the game had and Bethesda’s attempts to bring things around through updates. However, before the studio turned things around, this PlayStation Now move was all for getting their targeted monthly players. Fortunately, we did see this game get added to the PlayStation competitor subscription service platform, and it did provide enough players to keep the game support going.
Fallout 76 is still available today. The video game continues to see updates to help keep players logging in regularly. However, they might see a sudden drop in players for a little while since Bethesda just launched another massive RPG into the marketplace, that being Starfield. Again, this is far from the only bit of leaked content that came from Microsoft’s court documents. Earlier, we had reported about the mid-gen refresh for Microsoft’s Xbox consoles, even Microsoft adding the Xbox Series X console to the Xbox Design Lab. If you need a refresher on what Fallout 76 offers, you can view a Before You Buy when we covered the game after its big Wastelanders update.
