Fallout 4 "can top Skyrim" sales-wise, Bethesda boss predicts

Fallout 4 may sell even more strongly than Skyrim, a game that was a "massively big deal" for Bethesda.

Fallout publisher Bethesda has grown by leaps and bounds since Morrowind released on Xbox, but these last few years have been especially busy - a bunch of new studios opening or coming in-house, some great releases, and most recently the spectacular performance of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.

Bethesda executive Pete Hines thinks Fallout 4 may be poised to outdo even this juggernaut.

“I think this can top Skyrim. It could be our biggest release ever," he told MCV.

"But we will see. It is part of my job to build the megaphone that we hold up to the game, and the game decides how loud it goes. Just how big it is going to be is hard to say. Skyrim was a massively big deal.”

It would be weird if Hines didn't have confidence in his company's efforts, but he's not alone in this assessment; GAME UK has said it fully expects Fallout 4 to out-perform Skyrim.

We don't have lifetime sales for Fallout 3, but we know it shipped 4.7 million units within three months of launch. That's damn good, but you can see why Bethesda measures success by Skyrim - the RPG shipped 7 million units in its first week, with lifetime sales of over 20 million and a number of "fastest selling", "most concurrent" and "most average hours logged" records.

Fallout 4 launches on November 10 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.