When Fallout 76 released with its numerous issues, Bethesda's Todd Howard made a phone call to Xbox boss Phil Spencer that ended up helping to turn things around.

During the Bethesda-Microsoft briefing on Thursday, Howard recalled that Spencer was one of the first people he called when things went south with Fallout 76. Spencer directed Howard to some people at Xbox who gave Howard and his team at Bethesda some good advice about how to turn the ship around and get Fallout 76 back on the right path. As has been well-documented, Fallout 76 struggled at launch, both in terms of performance and stability, as well as claims from fans that it was not a true Fallout game because of its online nature and the absence of NPCs.

"When that game launched, the litany of issues we had, we let a lot of people down," Howard said of Fallout 76. "There was very little we didn't screw up, honestly. One of the people that I called was Phil. I said, 'Hey you know there's many things we're dealing with, what advice do you have?' And he put me in touch with some people at Xbox who were able to look at all of the games in the system and what was important and what wasn't important for games that made it for the long-haul."