Fallout 3 due for simultaneous release

Forthcoming Bethesda Softworks title Fallout 3 is set for a simultaneous release later this year on several platforms, according to the game's executive producer Todd Howard.

Bethesda's previous title, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, was released over a year later on the PS3 than on the Xbox 360 and PC platforms.

Speaking to videogaming247.com he said that the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions "should all be the same dateâ¦that's our plan."

Howard spoke of his belief that the game would transcend the traditional genre borders between role-playing games and first-person shooters.

"I like to think of RPGs as the best genre-blenders, in that you can do anything in them. No type of interaction is off limits and you can have action parts, puzzle solving parts, or anything else," he said.

"When you're making a shooter, you never ask 'can the player get married and have kids?' When you're making an RPG, that type of thinking goes on all the time, so while it may look like a shooter, I think that dramatically undersells what the game does."

He also explained that the Fallout 3 team has been looking carefully at a variety of influences, including Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road.

"The Road is fantastic and came out in the middle of our design phase, so it became required reading for many of us," he said.

"We looked at many post nuclear movies, some very disturbing, things that deal with Hiroshima and such, and it gave us a good look at that type of nuclear destruction. Other general ones we looked at were things dealing with survival or how people deal with the effects of any war or rebuilding."

Fallout 3 is due for release in Q3 of this year, and is set 200 years in the future in post-apocalyptic Washington DC.