When a game is released is important, when it's announced relative to that is just as important. For Fallout 4, the game was announced officially in June, a little before E3 in fact. Then at E3 it was announced that it was going to release in November, a mere six months away at the time. Why did that happen? Well, according to Peter Hines, it was a collective decision to help please many at Bethesda. Not the least of which was Todd Howard. “If you ask Todd he’d probably prefer like a week or even a day between announce and launch,” says Hines. “He tends to hate showing his stuff before it’s out because he’s a bit of a perfectionist and it takes a lot of time away from making the game to work on demos or presentations. It’s not that he doesn’t want to show fans what he’s making but every time he shows something he sees what’s wrong or what needs to be fixed.” “Ultimately we landed on six months, it felt like it worked for a game like this. We felt that it was highly anticipated. Obviously Bethesda Game Studios has a stellar reputation and it is both a Fallout 3 follow-up as well as a follow up to Skyrim which is well known throughout the world, and [we knew that] Fallout 4 would be something that would have a lot of buzz and noise around it and we didn’t need as long as you might for some other titles to kind of build that interest to launch.” Don't you wish more game companies would think like this? Probably would save a lot of games from delays don't you think?
It is quite nice that they announced the game then made sure to release it pretty soon, hopefully the launch goes as smooth as possible!
I love that the announced the game so close to the release date! I hate when they announce a game, and then are like "And it will be released two years from now!". Bethesda made a wise choice with this.
Well they were really smart about it this time around. Now if only someone could convince another certain company that is taking another long time to release a long awaited sequel (cough-hl3). The only hitch in their otherwise awesome plan was that guy who had Fallout 4 in his resume that was leaked a few days before the formal announcement.
Hahaha yeah, I think it's mostly Japanese companies that do that. Like Square-Enix, announcing a game a decade early!