Beth is a sorry bunch of chickens.it because
even after Oblivion they are not ready to invest in new IP, instead they are going to rape FO because
1. Bunch of people who played FO1and 2 will purchase FO3 because they are nostalgic. - at least the ROI is secured for Beth
2. Console kiddies will buy FO3 because it's like Oblivion which they loved, and "you can shoot cars and they go BOOM 1!!!one" and "have bullet decapitations 'n stuff" - loads of cash for Meth (sorry Beth)
3. HC purists will not buy FO3 - boohoo, to bad, and Beth will call us names.
They secured possible successors (...FO7), oodles of money, and some bad rep from purists, who by that time they will call "over the hill, old school gamers" - because they don't care. They will build modified IP and move it away from FO and make it a spin-off, so as a defense
they could say it's different coast - and not touch the WC stories (or so they think).
Fact is if enough people buy the game nobody will care for us canon lovers, and we can only hope to see what this MMORPG will be like. (hey maybe Interplay can mage 32 pixel chairs

for that one.)