Bethesda announces Fallout 5 while Xbox cuts thousands of seats

The announcement, released through Bethesda’s social channels, comes more than ten years after the release of Fallout 4, a chapter which in 2015 marked the last main episode of the saga. Since then the franchise has been kept alive thanks to the online spin-off Fallout 76 and the live-action television series produced for Amazon Prime Video.

Todd Howard, director of Bethesda, commented on the choice to focus on multiple fronts at once: “We are investing more deeply in the worlds that players love, giving creators a greater role in shaping their experiences and bringing our teams together to bring games to you sooner, support them longer and continue to build them together with you for decades to come.” On the new chapter of the post-apocalyptic series, however, details remain scarce: the project would still be in the pre-production phase, and Howard limited himself to calling it “a long-term destination”, while reiterating that “Fallout is one of our main priorities today”.

The news doesn’t stop here. Howard revealed that Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, is also developing a new installment in the series, without providing further details beyond the promise of future communications. Remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas are also in the works, both still without a release date.

The Elder Scrolls VI deserves a separate chapter, announced way back in 2018 and since then shrouded in silence. Howard didn’t provide a launch window, but confirmed that the game will share the same technology platform as Fallout 5 and remains “the main development focus today, with the majority of the team currently working on the next chapter in the saga.” According to the director, the production would proceed according to plan: “We are where we planned to be, we love how it is turning out and we play with it every day.”

The statements are part of the broader strategy outlined by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who has indicated as a priority the concentration on the most profitable franchises, with the declared objective of making Xbox “one of the few companies capable of entertaining more than a billion people a day”. Bethesda, acquired by Microsoft together with parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, fully fits into this vision.