At E3 this year, we got the bombshell of an announcement that the Xbox One version of Fallout 4 would have cross compatibility with mods made for the game on PC. Bethesda’s games have long had a vibrant modding community and culture, and it has led to them having extraordinarily long lives on the PC- something like this can make the Xbox One version of the game the most viable and best console version of the game as well.
Microsoft sees this as a huge advantage for the Xbox One, naturally. But according to them, it goes beyond just having the best version of Fallout 4 on their console. Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda sees the ultimate benefit of this in getting gamers more involved in the development process.
“That’s a really fun part of gaming. The more that you can get your fans and community involved in helping to shape and build a product, I think that’s a very positive thing – not only from a modding perspective, but also in thinking through ways that we can get fans integrated into the development process of our titles much earlier on,” Tsunoda told OXM.
Of course, Microsoft has taken strands to get consumers on board with game development pre-release thanks to their Preview Program on Xbox One, which is a console version of Steam’s Early Access, so they may yet see this as just an extension of that same philosophy.
Whatever their ultimate reasoning, the inclusion of mods for the Xbox One version of Fallout 4, as well as a free copy of Fallout 3, makes it the version to get, if you are going to be playing Fallout 4 on consoles.