Fallout 4, the game that dominated discussion in the video game world following its reveal on Tuesday, will only appear on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
The disclosure was attributed to Matt Grandstaff, Global Community Lead at Bethesda Softworks, in a comment on NeoGAF, one of the highest-profile gaming communities on the Internet. Grandstaff made the disclosure on Friday night.
NeoGAF
Fallout 4 will be the second major role-playing game release to eschew the previous-gen consoles. The sprawling RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released in May also only appeared on the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
The massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, released tomorrow, is only appearing on PC and current-gen consoles, and PC MMO Neverwinter was ported only to Xbox One in March.
The previous-gen consoles are inferior to the current hardware not only in terms of graphics but also in system memory—that being the primary limitation on resource-heavy, triple-A game design. It makes sense that role-playing games would be among the first genres to leave the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 behind.
The larger RPGs become geographically, especially open-world games, and the more gamers grow impatient with loading times, the less likely modern designs will work with inferior console hardware.
We asked Bethesda Softworks for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Illustration via Bethesda Softworks