We haven’t seen a high profile failure like Fallout 76 in a long time, a game which was critically panned upon release, and has also disappointed in terms of sales as a result. Bethesda has obviously received a lot of bad press as a result, not to mention several controversies surrounding the game since its launch- but according to industry analyst Michael Pachter, the Fallout 76 fiasco is not something that will be detrimental to upcoming single player Bethesda titles like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6.
According to Pachter, Fallout 76 is more indicative of the fact that Bethesda isn’t ready to do an online game yet, but that the bad press surrounding the game won’t impact Bethesda’s two upcoming single player RPGs much, and that people might end up looking at Fallout 76 as more of “a blip” than something that sets the trend for future releases as well.
“I don’t think there’s any risk to any future single player games,” Pachter said in an exclusive interview with GamingBolt. “It just tells you that they weren’t ready to make a multiplayer-only game. They probably have to go back and figure out what they did wrong, and how to get it right. I have to say, it’s the first game in the Fallout series I haven’t played, and I don’t have any interest in playing it. I mean, it was so poorly reviewed that I’m just not gonna try it, and I’ve played all their games for hundreds of hours.”
“I expect that people will look at it as a blip, but you never know,” he added later on.
Given how prominent Fallout 76’s failings have been on multiple levels, I think it’s possible that people might be apprehensive of future games coming out from the same studio, but it remains to be seen whether that is something that ends up affecting the quality of the games themselves.
Either way, by all accounts it’s probably going to be a few years before we found out, with both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6 probably years away from launch- though Pachter himself seems to believe that Bethesda might fast-track a release for the latter in 2019 itself. Read more on that through here.
