Fallout 76's horrible launch last year had an impact on the Bethesda's quality evaluation process, leading to the delay of DOOM Eternal.
Speaking on the USGamer Branching Narratives podcast, Bethesda's Pete Hines confirmed that the bad Fallout 76 launch reception forced the publisher to rethink its quality evaluation process, a change that led to the delay of both DOOM Eternal and Fallout 76: Wastelanders.
The fact that something doesn't go well; I mean, you never want it to not go well, but that shouldn't be your criteria for, 'Should we have tried this'. It is your criteria for how you should do things differently. I think it certainly had an impact on how we evaluated DOOM Eternal and [Fallout 76: Wastelanders] last year, and we said, 'These are not ready, and we're not going to make another mistake, and we're going to take the extra time even though that time hurts, and is painful, and you miss a holiday.'
While the delay pushed both games out of the Holiday 2019 release window, Pete Hines feels that the delays were for the best, as the two games ended up being much better for it.
Fallout 76 would have benefited greatly from a delay as well, as the game launched with a lot of issues that were only fixed weeks after its release. Despite the globally panned launch, Pete Hines felt that it was worth trying something different for the series.
The main reason for Fallout 76 was that the studio felt like multiplayer and shared experience was something that was brought up the most by folks who play Elder Scrolls games and Fallout games that they made. And they wanted to expand a little bit and try something different, not to the exclusion of ever making the kind of games that they're known for. Which was why they announced Starfield, because we wanted folks to understand, look, we're going to make another single player epic role playing game. We're not done with that. We just wanted to try something that was more shared and online to see what that was like. So that we have that experience so that if down the road, we ever want to try it again, like, well, we have some experience with this kind of thing.
Fallout 76 and DOOM Eternal are now available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One worldwide.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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