Fallout 4 began development long before the PS4 and Xbox One had their final hardware figured out. This meant that once it was, the team at Bethesda has to become familiar with the systems so they could get their game running. To do this, according to an interview with Game Informer, the team ported The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to the Xbox One.
“The first thing we did was port Skyrim to Xbox One,” explained Bethesda’s Todd Howard. Understanding that many would actually be excited about the possibility of a current gen version of the game, he quickly added “don’t get your hopes up yet.” It seems that the port was simply an exercise, allowing the team at Bethesda to get a grip on the Xbox One, so they could get to work on porting Fallout 4 over to it.
Nothing was said about how Bethesda got acquainted with the PS4, though starting with the Xbox One makes sense. The problem with Fallout 4 on a console is that the game is ridiculously massive. While the visuals might not be top of the line, the world is huge, and there are tons of things to do and see in it. Getting that to work on any console is a challenge, but starting with the Xbox One makes sense as it has had the most trouble handling games like this so far.
Fallout 4 hits PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 10th.
