Remember the extremely covetable Pip-Boy that Bethesda Softworks showed off at their E3 conference a week back? Well, turns out, Fallout 4 director Todd Howard wasn’t joking when he said that the upcoming RPG’s Pip-Boy Edition would be very limited in quantity; Bethesda’s final allocation of Fallout 4 Collector’s Edition bundles have shipped to retailers, and there will be no reruns; it’s just a one-time thing. If you haven’t pre-ordered one, haven’t gotten your hands on one yet, it’s over.
Priced at $119.99, it’s easy to understand why Fallout fans snatched this up with such enthusiasm. Not only is the Pip-Boy amazingly iconic, but when Bethesda kicked off development of Fallout 3, touchscreen phones weren’t even in vogue yet. The iPhone existed just as a figment of imagination inside Steve Job and Jony Ive’s heads then. How many of us were dreaming of owning tangible piece of the retro-tinged Fallout universe? Fast forward to the present tense, and the notion that we can geek out by sliding our ubiquitous smart phones into a wearable, real-life Pip-Boy is rather thrilling.
Bethesda cites quality as the reason why they won’t be mass producing the special edition of the game. “There are only so many we can make and maintain a level of quality. We don’t own our own factories,” said its PR and marketing exec Pete Hines. What this means is that if you have pre-ordered a copy for yourself, chances are you might be able to resell it at a premium once stock is officially depleted as there are probably tons of Fallout fans clamoring to get their hands on it.
[blockquote cite=”Todd Howard, Game Director, Fallout” type=”left”]“The Pip-Boy is important part of Fallout, and we love it so much that we made a real one. Yes, you can put your phone in it, and yes, we made an app for it so it works with the game, and yes it’s a second screen experience. Usually I find second-screen experiences to be stupid gimmicks, but as far as stupid gimmicks goes, this is the best f—–g one I’ve ever seen.”[/blockquote]
And, just in case you’re planning to scour eBay and pay whatever it takes to get your hands on the Pip-Boy, here are the cell phones it will fit: iPhone 6, iPhone 5/5s, iPhone 4/4s, Samsung Galaxy S4, and the Samsung Galaxy S5. The largest phone on the list is Samsung’s Galaxy S5, measuring 5.3-inches by 2.25-inches, which means Galaxy Note and iPhone 6+ owners are out of luck.
