Skyrim outsold Fallout 3. By a lot. This is quite true… But these aren’t directly relatable. First off, fallout vastly outsold Oblivion, the prior Elder Scrolls game. Secondly, Fallout 3 received vastly less televised marketing. Remember all those commercials on television and even in movie theatres for a good two or three months straight? Oh wait, that’s right, that’s how Bethesda marketed the last two Elder Scrolls games, not Fallout. Granted, fallout got the usual game magazine ads, and ad bars online, but Bethesda didn’t invest as much into heavy mainstream advertising for Fallout 3, not remotely. That makes a HUGE difference. Skyrim was advertised to and purchased by a demographic that basically only buys Call of Duty and Madden. I’m not saying they’re the ONLY people who bought Skyrim, it’s a fantastic game, but Bethesda made no point to reach these gamers with Fallout -a franchise that with its gritty violence, dark tones and mature content would have been more appealing to that crowd from a marketing perspective.

Im not decrying The Elder Scrolls, I love those games. But it’s a wildly incomplete statement to compare their sales in such a blanket statement like that, when the scenarios were so different for them. Marketing is huge, absolutely huge, and it’s not something to be overlooked.

Hope you’re right.

yes, they let the hoax go on for weeks profiting from the increased memorabilia sales. couldn’t be bothered to send out a simple “this is fake” through a tweet, or article, or any other medium. Took advantage of the situation, therefore I and many others don’t like them, therefore I wont be buying their game.

Uh….they didn’t do that? Hence…hoax?

I fully agree with your points. Me and my friends didn’t buy Fallout 3 until we heard all the rave reviews – many, many months later.

Morrowind, ESO, Oblivion, Skyrim… those are all great games in their own way, but Fallout 3 is iconic. It’s been seven years since its launch and Bethesda is still releasing new Fallout T-shirts and merchandise which sell out. Do other game titles have such an avid fan base?

No many people still care. They always do.

This isn’t really rocket science, and these speculatory articles about whether we’ll see Fallout 4 or not are really quite useless and boring. Every website posts several per month, and it’s always the same useless conjecture with the same “we really don’t know” ending. It’s pretty much a lock that we’ll see Fallout 4 in June. I just wish websites would stop dancing around logic and posting these types of speculatory articles when the truth is staring everyone in the face.

And not care.

They got enough money taking advantage of people through the false advertising from that hoax.