Phil Spencer says not having a new game ready for Fallout show was good

While speaking at the Paley International Council Summit on Nov. 12, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer did what every CEO has to do when called upon: talk about one of the company’s arguable failures.

Spencer appeared at the annual media conference for a panel about collaboration between Hollywood and the video game industry with Jonathan Nolan, director and executive producer of the Fallout television series on Amazon. The two were taking a victory lap, due to the show’s critical success and second season renewal, but Spencer still took the opportunity to address the gaming side of things too.

“We didn’t have a new [Fallout] game lined up for the launch,” Spencer said. “I actually think that gave us some creative liberty that [we] wouldn’t have had if we tried to coordinate production of two very different creative processes to land at the same time. The play is much more long term than trying to drive some gift buying.”

It’s almost like the Fallout adaptation took Microsoft by surprise. Similarly, speaking to Polygon last month, Wizards of the Coast’s vice president of design Aaron Forsythe said the overwhelming success of the Fallout-themed Magic: The Gathering decks, released around the same time as the show’s debut, was “not really planned, just amazingly fortuitous,” suggesting a lack of communication with Bethesda or Xbox. We’re told all the time executives rake in their exorbitant salaries because they specialize in this sort of high-level decision-making. But when did that come into play here, exactly?

Fallout developer Bethesda teased the Amazon adaptation in 2020. Microsoft finalized its acquisition of Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media a year later. With all that time — not to mention Microsoft’s immense operating capital — you’re telling me Xbox couldn’t come up with something to coincide with the show’s premiere? Of course, Bethesda was busy with Starfield. But it’s odd for Spencer not to acknowledge the missed opportunity, perhaps even offering some platitudes about the difficulties of re-releasing or remaking beloved titles like Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. (In their current forms, those games aren’t exactly friendly to non-gamers being introduced to the franchise for the first time, most of whom may not understand backwards compatibility or have the baseline knowledge to get them working on modern PCs. Despite that, tons of people flocked to those games anyway after the show came out.)

Spencer reportedly closed out his comments by pointing to the existence of the massively multiplayer Fallout 76 and Fallout Shelter on mobile as potential Fallout video games for folks coming off watching the television series. I’d argue that, while both have their merits, neither are core Fallout experiences.

Oh well. Guess this is no one’s fault, huh?