The nice folks at Bethesda Softworks are just about as pleased as punch with the launch of Fallout 3, to the point where they’ve decided to cut loose with a press release just to let everyone known how well things are going. Released just last Tuesday for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Games for Windows platform, Bethesda has shipped an estimated 4.7 million copies of the game to retail outlets all across North America and the UK, representing retail sales of more than $US300 million – that’s a million times the amount of money I have in my bank account right now. Of course those are shipping numbers, but the sales have been flowing quite nicely as well.

The press release then goes into a bit of back-patting over high review scores, which we’ve already been over, after mentioning that the game has yet to be released in Japan, where it is sure to meet with some sort of reception on December 4th, hopefully positive. Hit the jump for the full text of the press release, and if you see a Bethesda person today, remember to give them a slightly manic grin and a big old thumbs up.