Bethesda revealed Fallout 4 about a week and a half before they announced the release date for the game at E3 2015. Their announcements and reveals have been on a much smaller timeline than most other AAA games that are announced, get a teaser days/weeks later, then reveal a trailer, then a release date, then gameplay and so on – for months, if not years.
What made Bethesda choose to make their announcements so close together? Bethesda chose to announce the game and ship it within five months of announcing it because they could.
"The simplest answer was that we felt like we could," says Bethesda's Pete Hines in an interview with GamesRadar. "If we didn’t feel like that was enough time to generate the excitement that we expected and the interest that we wanted, then we would have announced it earlier. So part of it is because we felt like it was a big enough title that we could get away with it."
Hines admitted that the confidence they had in their reveal came from development on Fallout 4 being 'basically done.'
"We’re pretty close to being done, which you have to be if you’re going to ship in five months…It’s really fun to get this far into development and not say anything and then go ‘Boo! Here’s all this stuff. Here’s what we’re up to'. Which isn’t even all the full monty it’s just a big wide picture."
How Bethesda was able to keep this a secret for so long is quite amazing (sure there were leaks, but no gameplay leaks at all).
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