In a roundtable interview attended by Gamesradar, Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard defended the developer's latest titles, Starfield and Fallout 76. When one of the interviewers pointed out that they were more divisive among gamers than all-time classics like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Howard suggested that even the early stages of now-acclaimed franchises like Elder Scrolls and Fallout were a bit divisive, until the franchises found their groove and a dedicated audience. The game designer also noted that both Starfield and Fallout 76, the studio's first sci-fi game and first multiplayer game, have eventually found their niches.
If you look back at the beginning of Elder Scrolls, the beginning of Fallout, they're a little bit the same. And then, you find an audience that loves that. So, I think it's true that Fallout 76 and Starfield, clearly, they're creatively different than what we had done. And we really wanted to do that. When you're doing a certain type of thing for, in my case, 20 years, we want to try some other things and learn from that. We have ideas that we want to get out there. We're fortunate those games have found, in the scheme of things, giant audiences that let us keep doing things in them.
Even though they (Starfield and Fallout 76) are a bit off the core path of the single-player games that we have been doing, we're just fortunate to have the success that we've had with them.
Starfield recently received the Free Lanes update and Terran Armada DLC, which helped it more than triple the concurrent user peak on Steam compared to the previous week. However, probably due to the PS5 crash and freeze issues that several players have reported, it has seemingly sold fewer copies than anticipated for such a big (albeit late) release.
As for Fallout 76, that game has indeed grown over the past few years, between the solid post-launch support and the popularity of Amazon Prime Video's TV show. The latest update, titled 'The Backwoods', added Bigfoot as a boss and a major event overhaul.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
