Since the reveal of Fallout 4's Pip-Boy Edition at Bethesda's E3 press conference, the special collector's edition of the highly anticipated game has been one of the hottest products available… or rather, not available as it completely sold out from just about every retailer shortly after it was made available for purchase.
There's no doubt the contents of the collector's edition — which includes a wearable Pip-Boy Replica that actually houses your phone — justify the $120 price, but that's also part of the problem. The demand was just too great for the manufacturers. It's not that Bethesda doesn't want to keep selling Pip-Boy Editions; it's that they can't.
Speaking to GameSpot at Quakecon, Bethesda's VP of Marketing and PR Pete Hines explained that the factories in which Pip-Boys were being produced did not have the capacity to make any more of them. "We reached a point where we'd go back to the factories and they were like, 'guys, this is it, sorry. This is as long as we can run the lines and as many of them as we can make.'"
"They're being made today, it's not like they're done and sitting in a warehouse," Hines continued. "[The factories would tell us,] this is what the yields say. I mean, we don't make [the Pip-Boy Editions], and we'd go back to [the factories] and say, 'Demand for this is insane, we've got to make more.' And they'd move other projects off or shift stuff to other factories and it just came to [them telling Bethesda], 'Final answer: sorry, this is as many as we can make.' And we sold every single one of those that we could."
Hines previously tried to explain this to fans on Twitter (on numerous occasions), but the social media platform's 140-character limit doesn't really allow for great detail or explanation. Not that his more expanded response to GameSpot will have any impact on the thousands of unreasonable gamers who won't take no for an answer, but it's still nice to have a more detailed explanation.
As to why the Pip-Boy Edition sold out so quickly, it was more due to demand than supply. In fact, Hines revealed that Bethesda ordered more Pip-Boy Editions be made than any other limited edition products released in the past. "We made a sh*tload of Pip-Boys, and we went back and made more, and went back and made more," Hines said. "I keep seeing stuff about, 'Oh, you only did a few thousand.' No, we did a ton of these things. I think we did more of these things than we did for any collector's edition we've ever done, ever."
My suggestion, if you happen to walk into a store or find a Pip-Boy Edition available online, snatch it up because it is definitely a hot commodity — especially with no more being made. For $119.99, the Fallout 4: Pip-Boy Edition includes a copy of the game packaged in a capsule case, and an exclusive Pip-Boy Replica that you can wear on your wrist. It doesn't actually work on its own, but you can emulate the in-game experience by running the Fallout 4 app and inserting your phone into the Pip-Boy. There's also a few other goodies included, but it seems most are concerned with the Pip-Boy.
Fallout 4 launches on November 10 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
