The Fallout single-player series has essentially been on ice since the release of Fallout 4, all the way back in 2015. Since then, much of the focus has been on MMO Fallout 76, as well as wider releases tied to the franchise. Given just how popular it remains, it’s a huge surprise that more priority hasn’t been placed on getting another game into players’ hands sooner.
The massive amount of resources that are being pumped into producing The Elder Scrolls VI goes some way to accounting for that, but given that we haven’t seen anything of that yet either, it becomes all the more galling. Now, with all of that in mind, a startling realization starts to become apparent, and nobody would have predicted it around the time of the launch of the last game.
Fallout 5 Is Still Years Away
In case you missed it, Bethesda only confirmed that Fallout 5 was in production as part of a lengthy statement in July. That also included several other franchise projects that are coming down the pipeline, in what is quite an exciting announcement on the face of it:
“Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today. Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination, and we have multiple Fallout projects in active development right now,” the post reads. “We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences. While we’re not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.”
As great as that is, it unfortunately means that there’s little to no chance that the game will be releasing on the current generation of consoles (at least primarily). With the huge increase in price of components and hardware more generally, a huge swathe of players will be left out of the proverbial party.
The issues don’t stop there, though, as Xbox’s pivot towards exclusivity once again could leave those on PlayStation without a way to play Fallout 5. Even if it does make its way across to the PlayStation 6, there are thousands of players who have committed to not buying the console after Sony’s decision to forego physical game releases.
Elsewhere, The Fallout Franchise Is Thriving
All in all, it’s a fairly bleak picture for the next Fallout game, even if a certain level of commercial success is guaranteed by the IPs existing popularity. Things are a little happier elsewhere, though, with the third season of the Prime Video adaptation on the way next year. At least those aforementioned remasters should arrive in shorter order, giving us something to tide us over while we wait to see where the series is going next.
