With the recent success of Amazon Prime's Fallout TV adaptation, more people have played games in the long-running Fallout franchise than ever before. The most recent mainline entry, Fallout 4, saw its Steam concurrent player count reach heights it hadn't seen since 2015. The co-op and multiplayer-focused Fallout 76 is also breaking player-count records as Bethesda releases its first map expansion since its 2018 debut.
In a new interview with YouTube creator MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard addressed several questions surrounding the future of the Fallout franchise while offering tempering expectations for those of us who thought the success of the Fallout TV show would expedite development on Fallout 5.
From Todd's comments, it sounds like Fallout 76 will be updated for many years to come. And right now, the Fallout TV show is the place for those wanting a cinematic or in-depth story set in the Fallout universe.
With Bethesda Game Studios creating annual expansions for Starfield while developing The Elder Scrolls 6 (aka Skyrim 2), there's no rush for the studio to jump into Fallout 5.
"Fallout is relevant in the world, and clearly, people are hungry for even more," Todd Howard says. "And we've never stopped [working on] Fallout, though a lot of that work is happening in Fallout 76. We have the Skyland Valley update, and we're really excited about where that game is. The team is so proud of the work that's been done there."
"For Fallout games in the future," Todd continues. "Obviously, I can't talk about those right now, but I would say we're not rushing or feel we need to get stuff out that is different from the work we're doing in Fallout 76. The Fallout TV show fills a niche in the franchise and storytelling. I totally get the desire for a new kind of mainline single-player game, but those take time. I don't think it's bad for people to miss things; we want to get it right and make sure that everything we're doing in a franchise, whether it's Elder Scrolls or Fallout or now Starfield, become meaningful moments for everybody."
Watch the full interview below.