"J.E. Sawyer, who we last saw as the lead of BIS' last attempt at Fallout 3 (Van Buren), has confirmed he is lead on Fallout: New Vegas."

From NMA

Also Peter Hines has stated that they basically asked for an idea and that Obsidian pitched one to them.

"Pete Hines: I think we tried very hard not to put much in the way of parameters on them. To let them kind of come up with the idea. So we didn't go to them and say, we want a game that is set here, and--we didn't do that. We said, "What would you do with it? If we were going to do this, what would you guys like to do?""

From Shacknews interview

I think this is an amazing announcement and cant wait to see what they guys from Obsidian come up with!

They have really backed themselves into a corner... They have to name the module Colbet.

But its not a bad thing. This is all publicity for the space station.

Not sure that I would want to be stuck in that with 5 other people for two years.

Might end up with an Event Horizon type situation.

Although perhaps without the portal to hell..

You can give a download as a Christmas present.

Steam allows you to gift games to other people. Not quite the same though as they will have to wait for it to download.

I think that game stores will disappear over time. I don't think this will eliminate the demand for boxed games.

Why cant you do both? Have a digital version for people who want it and a boxed version as well. But dont sell the boxed version in stores. Sell them both from the same website. If you want a boxed version they will send it out to you at extra cost.

For example Indie game Age of Decadence will do the following:

"$25 direct download, $50 for a box... plus shipping." "Boxed version will include a full color, professionally produced box (as good or better than what you see in stores), full color glossy manual, full color glossy map. And the aforementioned CD case, of course."

The best thing about this is that if you go for the boxed version you can download the digital version as well. So you can start playing straight away. Stardock also do this for games like Galactic Civilisations 2.