It has been announced that Bethesda will be releasing a new Fallout game next year called Fallout: New Vegas.

This is not some big expansion pack either -- incredibly, it seems that Bethesda has contracted Obsidian Entertainment to work on the stand-alone title, that is not a sequel to Fallout 3. It'll be made for the PC, the Xbox 360 and PS3, and will use Bethesda's graphics engine.

Obsidian Entertainment is made up of many gaming industry veterans, most notably, much of the design talent that worked on all-time great PC RPGs Fallout, Fallout 2, and Planescape Torment as Black Isle Studios. More recently, Obsidian Entertainment has been responsible for newer RPGs such as Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2, as well as the upcoming spy RPG Alpha Protocol.