[UPDATE] Pete Hines has now offered a little more insight on the Fallout 4 vs. Skyrim comparisons. He said on Twitter that he was comparing Fallout 4 and Skyrim over the same period of time and that Fallout has in fact sold more copies than Skyrim.

@rskovbo i'm comparing them over the same period of time. and yes. — Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) February 8, 2017

The original story is below.

Fallout 4 has surpassed The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to become the "most successful" game in publisher Bethesda's history.

Appearing on the Kinda Funny Gamecast, Bethesda marketing executive Pete Hines said, "Fallout 4 has gotta be the most successful game we've ever launched in our company's history. More than Skyrim, in terms of what we did."

It's not immediately clear what Hines means by "most successful."

Skyrim, which was released in November 2011, sold more than 20 million copies as of 2014. Fallout 4, which came out in November 2015, shipped 12 million copies on launch day, though Bethesda has not provided a hard sales figure for the game since.

Skyrim got a sales boost last year with the release of the Special Edition remaster.

Also during the interview, Hines responded to the critique that Fallout 4 did not do enough to set itself apart from its predecessors. He agreed that the game shares commonalities with Fallout 3, but said the nature of the beast with sequels is the balancing act between preserving the core formula and pushing things forward. Sony's Uncharted series feels the same, Hines said.

"If you played Uncharted 4 and that was your first game, I think you have a very different reaction to what that game is than if, like me, you played 1, 2, and 3," he explained. "Because Uncharted 4 is more of 1, 2, and 3."

Finally, Hines offered a high-level tease for what Fallout 4 and Skyrim developer Bethesda Game Studios is going to make next. "Whether it's Fallout or Elder Scrolls or whatever they're gonna do next, I think their mantra is always we really gotta step up our game," he said.

In other Fallout 4 news, the game's high-resolution texture pack came out on Steam this week.