The second season of Amazon’s Fallout TV show has prominently featured New Vegas, a location first seen in Obsidian’s spin-off open-world RPG Fallout: New Vegas over 15 years ago. That’s led to a lot of Fallout fans and newcomers alike wanting to play or replay what many consider to be the best game in the franchise. But in 2026, you have a few different ways to play New Vegas, and not all of them are great. So here’s the best way to play Fallout: New Vegas, along with some other options that might also work depending on your situation.
The Best Way To Play Fallout: New Vegas
There is a simple answer to the best way to play Fallout: New Vegas, but the answer itself isn’t what I would call simple or easy. The best way to play this classic RPG is on PC and with a ton of mods. Thankfully, there’s a very handy guide out there that I used recently to turn New Vegas’s somewhat messy PC port into a fine-tuned experience: The Viva New Vegas comprehensive mod guide.
Something I really love about the Viva New Vegas guide is that it doesn’t aim to change New Vegas into some super-realistic version of the game that barely looks or plays like the original. Instead, the guide walks you through everything you’ll need to do (and there are plenty of steps to follow…) to get New Vegas running soundly on a modern PC. So no more random crashes or bad performance issues. It’s wonderful. This guide can also work for Steam Deck, too.
©VNV / Bethesda / KotakuThe other reason I love this guide is that it offers more mods and options for those who want more features in Fallout: New Vegas. Want to add more NPCs? Or a sprint button? Or improved textures that match the vibes of the original game, but make things look a little sharper on a high-resolution monitor? The Viva New Vegas mod guide will offer you all of that and more. Best of all, the guide will help you pick and choose the bits you want and let you skip stuff that doesn’t sound like your jam.
At this point, I’m not sure I can go back to playing New Vegas on any other platform or without many of the smart quality-of-life mods and tweaks this guide adds to Obsidian’s Fallout spin-off. But perhaps you don’t have the patience to spend around an hour or two modding New Vegas on your PC. Or maybe you don’t own a gaming PC. Well, this next section is for you!
How To Play Fallout: New Vegas On Xbox
Fallout: New Vegas was released on Xbox 360 and PS3 alongside PC back in 2010. Those versions of the game can be hard to go back to on original hardware. Trust me on that. But thankfully, Xbox owners don’t have to play New Vegas on Xbox 360. The open-world RPG is one of many Xbox 360 games that support FPS Boost on Series X/S. And it works like a treat. All you need to do is own New Vegas on Xbox, install it, and turn on FPS Boost in the game’s Xbox compatibility settings. And that’s it. No guide needed.
Now, when you boot up New Vegas, you’ll get to play the classic RPG at 60 FPS. And it’s a pretty stable, if not perfect, experience. It is a lot better than how the game ran on PS3 and 360 back in the day. Of course, this version of the game doesn’t include any extra mods or tweaks, and it runs at 720p, which isn’t ideal. But if you don’t mind the fuzzier visuals or perhaps prefer a more authentic presentation, Fallout: New Vegas on Series X/S is a damn fine way to play one of the best Fallout games ever made.
The Worst Ways To Play Fallout: New Vegas
If you want to play Fallout: New Vegas on a PlayStation 5, I have bad news: It ain’t great. The game, like all PS3 games, doesn’t support native playback on the PS5, so you have to stream it from the cloud. Bleh. It’s playable, assuming you have a good internet connection, but it lacks the 60 FPS boost of the Xbox port or any of the mod options of the PC version. Not helping matters is that the PS3 ports of Bethesda games back then were rough, often featuring extra bugs and performance issues not present on Xbox 360. Oh, and depending on when you read this, you might literally be unable to stream New Vegas on PS5 at all.
If you really, really want to play Fallout: New Vegas, but don’t want to mod it, don’t own an Xbox, and hate the idea of playing the PS3 port of the game, then you could play it via Amazon’s Luna streaming service. I’ve tried this out, and it runs better than the PlayStation 3 version and supports mouse and keyboard. But without any mods, New Vegas can be a bit of a mess. Still, if your options are limited to streaming New Vegas on Luna or PS5, I’d go with Luna every day of the week.
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