During Summer Game Fest: Play Days 2026, we had the opportunity to speak with two key Fallout 76 developers: Jon Rush, Creative Director, and Bill LaCoste, Production Director. Our chat goes through the recent Infestations update, upcoming PS5/XSX updates, a potential Nintendo Switch 2 release, and even hints at what’s next for Fallout 76. Thank you to Jon and Bill for their time and insights, and thank you to Bethesda for the opportunity! Please enjoy.
The recent Infestations update also marked the beginning of Season 25, Appalachia Under Siege. How has the team thought of new ideas for content and features to keep Fallout 76 fresh and exciting for players?
JR: That’s a great question. I mean, we’ve got plans for content for years down the road, and where those ideas come from, it comes from playing the game. We’ll play the game and see things that we think the game can use, and also by being very mindful of player feedback, not only in what players say and what they post in videos, but also in how they play the game and speak to us that way.
The good part about working in Bethesda Game Studios is that there’s no shortage of great ideas, so we kind of take that combination of ingredients and do our best to space that out across the roadmap for years down the road. It’s a very organic process. Emotional decisions are based around, like, “I want, I like, I need.”
Whenever these ideas come up, how does the team get together and talk about them? Is there a process of bringing new ideas to the table, or is it just, “Hey, we’re in a meeting, I had this great idea, and we talked about it?”
JR: I’ll usually get with Bill, I’ll get with Carl, our lead designer, and we will talk through some features, like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if some places in Appalachia that players don’t really go to much anymore were taken over, and give them a reason to go back there and fight for four-star legendaries?”
And I’ll be like, “Yeah, what would that look like? How does that work?” Then once we kind of nail down sort of a back-of-the-box summary, we take that to the rest of the team: “Hey, do you have any ideas to add on this? What’s not working? What do you think is going to go wrong with this? What problems are there with this thing that we need to solve?”
Putting something together, getting it in the game, trying it out, feeling it, and making adjustments from there, that’s really how we’ve always made new features. Anything from fishing to infestations, to raids, like Gleaming Depths. Gosh, we made a Gleaming Depths experience video in like three days. Like, here’s what the experience would feel like going into a raid. It was this canned video, and people from there were just like, “Yes, and what if? Yes, and how about?” And the feature just grew from there.
BC: One thing that doesn’t get talked about a lot, too, is that the company has a game jam every year for a week. So we get a lot of ideas. People who download the build start making their own stuff. They’re like, “This is really cool.” They put together a video, everybody watches it, and they’re like, “Hey, that’s actually a really good idea.” Sometimes the thing’s done, so we try to figure out a way to get them in.
We get a lot of ideas from the community, a lot of ideas from how we play the game and how we interact with the game. We move through feedback, and also sometimes, again, it’s just us talking in the break room. Like, “Hey, I was playing last night.” He’s like, “You know what? I think what’s missing is this.” And people are like, “Oh, actually, yeah, that would be really cool.” We figure out ways to get that into a pitch.
When you talk about process, yeah, there’s a process of getting the pitch together, reviewing it with stakeholders, and then going through the kickoff process and getting scoping around everything. So yeah, there is a process once we get past that initial thought phase.
Building on Infestations, would this be considered the next step up for Fallout 76’s endgame content?
JR: This is an additional way for players to get four-star legendaries, right? Something that we have seen from player feedback is that they were looking for a way, other than doing complete new gaps and the occasional encounter, to get four-star legendaries. So we wanted to offer them that chance, as well as the opportunity for unique four-star legendaries that they can only get through Infestations.
It’s not meant to replace raids. It’s not meant to be a raid number two type of experience. Those types of experiences are separate, and we have plans for things like that down the road. This was a way, like fishing, to get people to rediscover parts of the map that maybe they haven’t been to for a while, and have reasons to go to these places.
Are there any plans for content additions and updates in future seasons for Infestations?
JR: Absolutely. Something that we’ve seen with Infestations right away was that they are too easy for our players. They’re getting through them in like a minute, which is unfortunate, because the 40-ish unique locations that we have chosen were chosen because it gives our AI, for the enemy types they encounter, opportunities for different strategies in these spaces.
The problem is that right now, they’re not living long enough to be able to employ any of these strategies. They’re coming in, and they’re like, “Yeah, we’re here!”
So, we have plans for the next update to make them much, much harder, and then we have plans for the patch after that to slow the experience down so that more players have a chance to get there and participate in the Infestation. We don’t want that sense of FOMO. We want this to be a fun experience that you do with your friends. You’re not worried about missing out. We don’t want that FOMO at all. So that’s all coming up.
Public testing for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S versions of Fallout 76 will begin later this month. Will there be selectable performance options for those versions? Will these versions leverage platform-specific features such as 3D audio or haptic triggers? And what can players overall on these new platforms look forward to?
BC: Yeah, initially we’re just going to be making sure that we’ve got these things running and they’re on there, and then we’re going to be optimizing later in the future for each of those individual platforms. Right now, we’re just super excited to get PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, as well as Xbox Series X and S builds there.
I would say on PlayStation 5 Pro, for example, you’ll be able to play at 1440p, 60 frames a second, same with Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X at 4K, 60 frames a second. Those experiences are really good. But now that we’ve got those separated out, and then the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One builds have their own platform, we’ll be able to optimize better in the future.
That’s what we’re looking to do, just have more expansion into that in the future, making sure that we’re adding better fidelity even for the current-gen hardware. And yeah, just make the game better. So we have to start at the first point, which is like, okay, we’re good. We have it working. It’s all there. It’s ready to go. It’s performant. Now we’re good. Now we can embark on some additional stuff.
We’ve actually got three or four different things in terms of graphical fidelity and performance in the pipeline.
That’s awesome to hear. I guess speaking of platforms, has Bethesda and the Fallout 76 team considered developing a Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game?
BC: Not really. I think it’s come up a few times, but right now we’re just focused on new content for the game itself. If the opportunity arises where we think it makes sense, then yeah, we’ll probably investigate. But right now, no plans.
Finally, beyond Infestations, what can players look forward to in the second half of 2026 for Fallout 76?
BC: Oh, that’s a good question. He’s got a couple of things. One of them I’ve been hounding him about for a while. We love our puns around here. So yes, very much so. It’ll scratch the itch of some players, I think.
JR: Coming from the public test server and coming out later toward the end of 2026, what would the wasteland look like without a CAMP pet following you around the wasteland, adventuring with you, exploring with you, fighting with you?
You can tell it to sit, tell it to stay, you can tell it to speak, you can tell it to come, you can tell it to guard, you can tell it to kill. It can level up, and it can get its own perks. We’re talking dogs, cats, radhogs, and deathclaws. That’s coming later this year.
Fallout 76 is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions are due out this Summer.
