While rumors of a Fallout 4 lingered for years, the official announcement didn’t come until shortly before E3 2015 last month. The more surprising part of the reveal was that the game would launch just a few months later, in November 2015. Apparently this is for a very good reason, as Bethesda’s marketing executive Pete Hines told Gamespot that the game was “basically done” before the announcement even took place.
“Let’s be honest, [right now] it doesn’t matter what anybody wants for a feature in Fallout 4,” Hines said. “The game is basically done. It was by and large done before we announced it, in terms of the features going in. You’re not adding new features in May, June, July in the year you’re releasing; you’re trying to get everything fixed.”
This type of reveal, where the game is already in a near-launch state, is pretty rare within the AAA gaming environment. Aside from maybe Nintendo, most game companies announce their games months, sometimes years in advance.
We’ve all seen games like The Division, Halo 5, and Uncharted 4 where they were announced long in advance of their final release date, with subsequent E3’s and other conventions serving as reminders that the game exists. We’ve also seen the huge downside that these sorts of early reveals can have, such as Duke Nukem Forever, Starcraft Ghost, and Beyond Good & Evil 2, where the game never comes out, or launches in a sorry state.
It’s nice to see Bethesda take a different approach, having the game prepped and ready for launch. It’s also good to hear that they are already working on bug fixes, as previous Bethesda games haven’t been the most stable experiences at launch.
To read more, including how fan feedback has worked within the process, head over to Gamespot for the full interview. Fallout 4 hits PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 10th.
