The last we heard about mods coming to the home consoles was that Todd Howard and crew had already inked a deal with Microsoft for the Xbox One to get Fallout 4 mods, and they were working on getting things sorted with Sony and the PS4. According to the latest interview with game director Todd Howard, they may have already inked that deal with Sony.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Howard mentions...
We architecture our system so that mods work. They work on Skyrim if you can get them on a console, Oblivion aswell. And Fallout 3. But there’s no way of getting them there. There’s still a lot of work to do. It’s going to come out on PC first, then they’ll move to Xbox One, then to PS4. There is a lot of work involved getting them onto each system.
I can only imagine.
Consoles have usually been mod-averse due to the unpredictable nature of what can happen when a mod is installed on a system. That's not to mention that sometimes some mod creators attempt to load malicious content into their mods and we end up with things like the Angry Planes mod for GTA V. For those of you who don't remember the author loaded some malicious software into the mod so when people installed it there was a virus that was implemented into the system.
I do wonder exactly how they plan to get around the issue of dealing with some mods that may attempt to run hidden system scripts or attempt to manipulate the OS? Of course, on the upside the PS4 and Xbox One are both running custom operating systems with various layered security software right down to the kernel.
To the benefit of both Microsoft and Sony, modders don't actually have the OS documentation for either system, so if they tried running anything through the mods to take control of either system it would all be guesswork. Although, then again that didn't stop modders from using a light exploit in the original Splinter Cell from soft-modding the OG Xbox through a saved game.
But yeah, manipulating the security of either system would probably be the top priority for Bethesda when it comes to ironing out Fallout 4 for the Xbox One and PS4. I can only imagine the salt that would spill if a hacker managed to compromise either system through a Fallout 4 mod.
This also marks the first time that a Bethesda game on home consoles will support PC mods. Previously, Epic Games tried a similar thing for the PS3 with Unreal Tournament III, but it wasn't one of those games that had a long-lasting modding community. That's not to say that the mods weren't good, it was just that the game didn't quite seem to capture the same level of dedication that Unreal Tournament 2004 did.
In the case of Fallout 4 I imagine that the modding community will likely be a lot more robust than both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas given that now the audience for the mods will now include the Xbox One and PS4.
Fallout 4 is set to launch this November for consoles and PC and the mod tools will launch shortly thereafter. According to Todd Howard, mods for consoles should be made available throughout the early half of 2016.
