Fallout 4 Console Mods Coming in Early 2016

Bethesda Game Studios has elaborated a bit on its console mod initiative (so far, announced only for Xbox One) on its official Twitter account. While Fallout 4 is going to come out in November, it won’t be possible to download and use mods on the Xbox One version of the game until “early 2016”.

As for PlayStation 4 players, we’re given no assurance but the studio’s Twitter account said the developers are hoping to bring the initiative on Sony’s console too:

#Fallout4 mod sharing (from PC) coming after launch to Xbox One in early 2016. We hope to bring it to PS4, too. #BE3

Hopefully we should learn a lot more on how this works near launch, because installing the most complex mods for Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim wasn’t just a matter of downloading a file, and often required additional tools and extenders (most famously, the Script Extenders for all three games), load order and conflict sorting, etc.

Bethesda will need to either give the community really robust tools or make the limits and requirements very clear. On top of that, it wouldn’t hurt if they also provided a user friendly community hub and interface, though that would largely depend on what kind of audience they want to target.

If Bethesda envisions this as a way to make the hardcore niche happy, then a user friendly hub might not be a high priority, but if they have a larger, more casual audience in mind, then they need to offer a more polished experience than the one seen on PC.