Fallout's Official New Next-Gen Release Leaves Gamers Divided

10 hours ago 7

Published Jun 7, 2026, 5:00 AM EDT

James is a gaming writer from London who has spent thousands of hours exploring titles from every genre. Though he has a particular affinity for multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft, Destiny 2 and League of Legends, he has also put thousands of hours into single-player experiences, from deep RPGs to epic PC strategies. When he's not playing or writing, he can usually be found supporting his beloved Brentford FC.

There's little doubt that Fallout is one of the better RPG franchises anywhere, and that's evidenced by all of the unusual places it has been cropping up in recent times. Whether it's the genuinely very good Prime Video adaptation or the long-running TTRPG, there's a little something out there for everyone if you know where to look.

That said, we aren't going to get another single-player game in the series for a long time to come yet, with Bethesda putting almost all of their eggs in the Elder Scrolls VI basket for the time being. As part of that unfortunate phenomena, we have to look elsewhere for our kicks, and there is one ongoing game in the series that's about to get a major new release.

Fallout 76 character holding helmet from official trailer

As part of a recent blog around the upcoming schedule for Fallout 76, Bethesda confirmed that they are about to enter a testing period for a new version of the game that has a ton of performance improvements for new consoles. This next-gen update is set to roll out in the Summer, with the full list of upcoming changes as follows:

Targeted 60 FPS across Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PS5 Pro.
Improved draw distances.
Improved shadows.
4K resolution (on compatible displays) on Xbox Series X, Xbox One X, PS5 Pro.
VRR (on compatible displays) on Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5, PS5 Pro.
PS5 and PS4 Pro will support 1440p while previous generation platforms will continue to support 1080p.

What you might notice there is that the PS5 has been left out of the 4K resolution performance boost, despite the Xbox One X's inclusion. It's a weird one for sure, and under a post sharing that information on Reddit, fans were quick to share their own thoughts about this latest update.

"Calling it 'next gen' is a stretch. This is purely an update to boost the player count, and bring the game up to standards that should already have been in place," one comment read.

"1440p on base PS5 and 4k on One X is wild," another added.

"No 4k for PS5? What is with Bethesda being absolute idiots with PS things?" a third read.

Obviously, Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, so there's every chance we'll see some favoritism moving forward, but in this case it feels much more like they have run into a technical issue with the base PS5, given that Pro players are getting the 4K upgrade.

If you haven't given it a go yet, as a fan of the franchise, Fallout 76 is a genuinely good time that can be had for relatively little outlay. The updates have largely been positive in recent months, and given how long we're going to have to wait for another game, this is easily the best bet we have in the meantime.