Todd Howard thinks Fallout 76 launch would’ve gone better with Xbox Game Pass

Todd Howard has opened up on the problems Fallout 76 faced when it launched.

Yesterday, during a roundtable discussion between Xbox and Bethesda, Todd Howard said: "When [Fallout 76] launched, the litany of issues we had, and we let a lot of people down, and, well, there was very little we didn't screw up honestly,"

It's a brutal but fair reflection on a game that many felt ultimately missed the mark on understanding what made Fallout so good: a lived-in world and meaningful characters and quests, all of which Fallout 76 was missing at launch nearly three years ago.

Now though, Howard feels as though Bethesda's acquisition by Xbox will help the former's game be better-tested before launching. In fact, Howard even implied that had Fallout 76 launched on Xbox Game Pass, the game's earlier months would have ultimately been easier to weather. Howard even claimed that Fallout 76 is one of the most played games on Xbox Game Pass to date, an impressive feat considering the games on offer.

Fallout 76 is now available on Xbox Game Pass, having been added to the subscription service back in July 2020. Yesterday, during the Bethesda and Xbox roundtable discussion what the acquisition of the former by the latter would entail for both parties, it was revealed that 20 Bethesda games would be arriving on Xbox Game Pass immediately.

There's now the likes of Dishonored, Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Evil Within, Fallout 4, and many more Bethesda games available on Xbox's streaming service. During the roundtable, Xbox boss Phil Spencer hinted at future Bethesda games being available on Xbox Game Pass on day one, and even made comments about future Bethesda games being exclusive to Xbox platforms.

As for Fallout 76, there's a general consensus among players that Bethesda has largely turned things around since the disastrous launch in 2018. A whole host of additions over the last three years have really gone a long way to breathing life into the game, including NPCs, quests, factions, and multiple expansions, like the most recent Steel Dawn expansion, which introduced the famed Brotherhood of Steel to Fallout 76's Appalachia.