Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios.

Fallout 4 director Todd Howard: Giving fans what they want without spreading too thin

Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, noted in a recent talk at the Gamelab event in Barcelona that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim keeps migrating to new platforms because fans keep buying it on every new platform. But even a big company like Bethesda, which is owned by Bethesda Softworks (in turn, owned by ZeniMax Media), has to make trade-offs about where to devote resources.

Howard has worked at Bethesda for 25 years, and in recent years, he has hit his stride as director on games such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Fallout Shelter. Howard is happy to give fans more of what they want, as evidenced by the recent announcements at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) of Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls VI.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.