Bethesda has an announcement for Fallout 4 fans on the PS4, and it's a mix of both good and bad no matter how you slice it. The good news is that the private beta for Fallout 4's PS4 mods is coming soon, and it has enabled the Creation Kit to support the ability to upload PS4 mods to Bethesda.net in preparation for the event.
The bad news? There are a whole bunch of issues present, which makes the PS4 mods vastly inferior to those on the Xbox One and PC.
As far as the mods are concerned, according to the announcement, Update 1.5.4 has three main problems that Bethesda needs to sort out. The first problem arises when a mod uses PC textures, and apparently, it causes memory usage and overall performance issues to arise, while the second makes it so that the audio doesn't work, since the PS4 sound is proprietary. Fortunately, Bethesda revealed it is already working with Sony to get these problems fixed.
However, the third — and probably biggest issue — is in a league of its own. For reasons not specified, the PS4 Mod Storage limit is at 900 MB. This doesn't mean there will be any performance issues like before, but it means that any mod that surpasses the aforementioned size will flat-out not work.
Just like with the other two issues, Bethesda is working with Sony to address this, but the fact that it's present at all is emblematic of a larger problem that has become increasingly apparent in recent weeks: Fallout 4 on the PS4 is inferior to its Xbox One and PC counterparts.
From the get-go, the PC iteration of Fallout 4 has been the best way to experience the game. Graphics aside, it had mods available, with which open-world RPGs like Fallout 4 go hand-in-hand. However, that gap was poised to become a little smaller when Bethesda announced in May that mod support would be coming to consoles in the very near future.
The Xbox One was the first to get this support, and everything went smoothly, for the most part. Sure, there were some problems, such as mods being rehosted without the creator's consent, but players on the XB1 finally had a chance to experience what those on the PC had enjoyed for months.
Now, it's the PS4's turn, and it's clearly getting the raw end of the deal. The audio and memory/performance issues are one thing, but the mod size is another. With 900 MB available, that puts it at less than half of the 2 GB mods the Xbox One is allowed. Forget experiencing what PC players can, players on the PS4 can't even have an experience similar to what's seen on the Xbox One.
Of course, there are other issues that previously suggested the PS4 port was the weakest of the three. For example, the Far Harbor expansion suffered an assortment of problems (as most Bethesda games usually do before launch) across all platforms, but only the PS4 required a fix that delved into reinstalling the game a week or two later.
As mentioned before, Bethesda is making efforts with Sony to fix all of this, but it must be frustrating to play this on the PS4 and know that you are either getting a weaker product or a late one.
