Rockville Video Game Company Makes Global Splash with New Fallout Game

Popular local video game maker has fans excited over its latest announcement this week

By Kelly Seegers, Andrew Metcalf

Screenshot via Fallout 4 Trailer on YouTube

To say that Bethesda Softworks fans are enthusiastic would be an understatement.

The Rockville-based video game publisher sent shock waves through the video game world Tuesday and Wednesday when it announced the latest installment of the Fallout franchise—Fallout 4.

The game’s trailer, a three-minute tour through an “open-world” apocalyptic Boston after the city was hit by nuclear fallout, garnered more than a million views on YouTube in its first few hours posted Wednesday. The trailer rose to the top of the popular website Reddit and received more than a quarter million page views on Gawker Media’s video game site Kotaku over a few hours.

Fans of the Fallout series have waited more than 7 years for another installment from Bethesda Softworks—one of the most respected role playing game publishers in the video game industry.

Bethesda Softworks’ previous game in the series, Fallout 3, was released in 2008 and earned several awards, including top honors at the 2009 Game Developers Choice Awards and “Ultimate Game of the Year” at the 2009 Golden Joystick Awards. The game was set in Washington D.C., 200 years after a nuclear war. Gamers could create a character who could travel through the “Capital Wasteland” and fight mutants, ghouls and raiders. Fallout 3 brought vivid scenes of D.C. and even some scenes set in Bethesda to gamers across the globe.

Founded in 1986 in Bethesda, Bethesda Softworks is a worldwide publisher of interactive entertainment software and a part of ZeniMax Media Inc., which is also based in Rockville. It publishes other popular video game franchises, such as the Elder Scrolls series.

At the time of its release, Fallout 3 outsold all previous games in the franchise, selling 4.7 million units and earning $300 million worldwide in just the first week of sales. Accordingly, the expectations for the latest installment of the series are high.

Bethesda Softworks started a countdown Tuesday before their big announcement in order to build suspense, with an accompanying hashtag, #PleaseStandBy. On Wednesday it changed all of its website homepages to the new Fallout trailer.

The game will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Bethesda Softworks plans to reveal other details about the game on June 14 at an Electronic Entertainment Expo event in Hollywood.

Bethesda’s most recent game—Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim—has sold over 20 million copies since it was released in November 2011.