As Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 keep reaching new heights with sky-high player counts, it highlights a new problem for Xbox

What you need to know

• Fallout mania continues into a new week, with Fallout 4 continuing to rise in concurrent player count on Steam. 
• Over the weekend, Fallout 76 hit a new all-time high concurrent player count, over five years after it first launched. 
• The trouble is that there's nothing new on the horizon for a long time, so could Xbox have been a little more forward-thinking and got Bethesda (or maybe Obsidian?) working on something?

As I write this, it's been a mere 11 days since the Fallout Prime Video show debuted its first season, and it has been a whirlwind since. Many of us have now finished its eight episode run and been captivated by it, and the knock on effects are significant. 

Amazon has already confirmed Fallout Season 2, along with declaring it as one of the platform's top three watched shows of all time. The games, too, are experiencing a serious resurgence, with all titles on all platforms seeing crazy numbers given the age of the games. 

This hasn't slowed down into another weekend, either. Fallout 4 continues to rise in its concurrent player count on Steam, topping out at over 160,000, and coming only behind Helldivers 2 at that moment for a premium (aka, paid) game on the platform. Let's also not forget that last week, Fallout 4 was the best-selling game in Europe.  

Not only that, but Fallout 76 has, this past weekend, hit a new all-time high concurrent player count on Steam, with the always-online title topping 73,000 players. These would be numbers a brand-new title could be proud of, let alone ones released several years ago. Fallout 4 is almost nine-years-old.

This is great news for Xbox and Bethesda, it's great news for the wider Fallout franchise as a whole, including the show. The trouble is that if you look at the bigger picture, this all highlights one major, glaring issue that Xbox now has. 

Anything new from Fallout is a LONG way off

Fallout now has an entirely new legion of fans. Of those skyrocketing numbers, it's of no doubt there is a substantial number of folks going back into the games. I class myself in that, as I've played most of the Fallout games for a little while, but never really stuck with them. The show has ignited a fire inside, and I'm going back in. 

But, while the long-term fans might be happy, the fact there's nothing new on the horizon either for those people, or, more importantly, the new fans, well that's a problem. The Fallout franchise has a ton of content to play through, but let's be real, a new Fallout game is a long, long ways off. Bethesda has already said that it won't be working on it until after Elder Scrolls 6 ships, which means we'll be seeing season two of the show, maybe even three and four (if they get commissioned) before we'll see a new mainline Fallout game. 

I think Xbox, now the Overseer of the Fallout universe, and indeed Bethesda, has been a little short-sighted here. It never took a genius to see that the show would have some kind of impact on the games, after all, we've already seen it happen with The Last of Us. Fallout is bigger than that, it has a wider fan base and a much bigger world to explore. The show first became a reality back in 2020, four years ago. 

In those years since, how did nobody think about commissioning a new game, a remake, or another New Vegas style spinoff? Fallout 76 being a live service game at least gives it some legs to keep going, but even in the world of making video games, four years is a long time. Could the original games have been remade in that time? Could Fallout 3 and New Vegas have been given a modern overhaul? Surely something could have been planned? 

Of course, I'm just a gamer and reinvigorated Fallout fan thinking out loud here, not the head of a massive company like Microsoft. I just can't quite understand why there wasn't a little more forward-thinking here to capitalize on the inevitable success of the show for fans, both new and old. 

As it stands, the next thing we have to look forward to is indeed another season of the show, and hopefully further seasons after that. As it already looks like New Vegas will be a part of its return to the screen, it's hard to see anything other than another massive success. 

On the gaming side, though, the horizon is much like the Wasteland. Unpredictable, and at times, empty. We do, of course, have the Fallout 4 current-gen upgrade happening this week on April 25 on PC and console, so that'll be something to enjoy. There's also the massive Fallout: London mod in the works, too. Mods are fun and add plenty of replayability into the franchise, but really, it shouldn't be all on the community to keep folks hanging around. Definitely not when it comes to newer, perhaps more casual players. 

A big part of me hopes something has been secretly worked on and kept quiet until show season later this year, but I'm also not holding my breath. I really think Xbox and Bethesda have missed a trick here.