Despite previous reports revealing the game’s 2026 release window, The Elder Scrolls VI is at least five years away and is likely to release, unsurprisingly, only on PC, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
Today, new court documents of the FTC vs. Microsoft case surfaced online, including a summary of Microsoft’s approach following acquisitions since 2018, which includes all games released by Bethesda since its acquisition as well as the yet-to-be-released sixth entry in The Elder Scrolls series. According to the document, the game is not releasing on PlayStation 5, and its expected release window is 2026 or later. As reported on X/Twitter by Axios’ Stephen Totilo, during the testimony at the hearing, Phil Spencer clarified the game’s release date, saying that it is at least five years out, and that platforms have yet to be determined, although, back in 2022, Microsoft did say that The Elder Scrolls VI is unlikely to release on platforms other than PC and Xbox Series X|S.
I’ve always been a fan, but no way I’m buying a second system just for Bethesda games.
Yes, I bought a switch to play Zelda, but that’s where I draw the line.
Skyrim has released on basically every platform that exists, I have to assume Starfield, and ES6, will eventually release on PS5. That is just too much money to leave on the table.
On the other hand, Demon Souls was spawned out of a failed PS exclusive to go head to head against Oblivion, and I’d dare say the souls series have given more to gaming than the past decade of Bethesda releases.
Wasn’t Cyberpunk 2077 released like, a decade after its original teaser trailer?
Anyways, Skyrim hasn’t aged gracefully, Fallout 4 sucked ass, Fallout 76 was less ass than Fallout 4 but still pretty ass, and from the sounds of it, Starfield was a resounding mediocrity. I’m really not in any rush to play another new Bethesda game given their recent track record lol.
Bethesda hasn’t made a great game since Skyrim. And tbh, I probably look back on Skyrim more fondly than it deserves because I was in highschool when it came out.
I’ve played 30 hours of Starfield and feel like I didn’t really have fun the whole time. It just felt like a 6/10 game. Very pretty, 10 miles wide, and an inch deep. And there’s too much of it that is actually downright bad.
It’s sad because Bethesda used to be the gold standard for RPGs, but their ambition is getting the best of them. It’s very apparent in Starfield with all the empty space, the same 5 repeated planetary buildings, only like 3 types of enemies, and a severe lack of planet flora/fauna. And the missions are mostly really boring and not challenging.
I’m not hopeful that Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be anything better than mid-tier.
Bethesda hasn’t made a great game since Skyrim.
Since Morrowind. Skyrim wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but it can’t hold a candle to its granddaddy in terms of world-building and stat-based character advancement, which was sacrificed for the sake of action combat that is not even close to good enough to carry the game.
But here’s the thing… Bethesda hadn’t made a great game before Morrowind either. That was their big breakout hit, and ever since then they’ve just been remaking that same game with slightly different coats of paint hoping to catch lightning in a bottle for a second time. They used to make more varied and innovative games before that, but none of them was really all that good. Terminator: Future Shock had fully 3D environments and enemies and a mouselook control scheme a year before Quake, but there’s a good reason why the latter game is remembered as one of the foundational pillars of the genre and the Bethesda offering lies forgotten.
So I agree with you that expecting TES6 to be amazing is naive, but I don’t think it’s because Bethesda has gotten worse. It has simply regressed to the mean.
their ambition is getting the best of them
Always has been. I haven’t played Starfield yet, but from what I’ve read about it online, including your description, it sounds a hell of a lot like a sci-fi version of Daggerfall, which was insanely overambitious for its time. It’s a shame they seem to have focused on making the graphics prettier rather than the procedural generation more complex and interesting.
Xbox X Series +X user base in shambles
The official announcement teaser for The Elder Scrolls VI came out in June of 2018. That means Bethesda will have most likely started advertising the game a full decade before it came out, if the game is at least five years away at this point.
On the one hand I fully agree. They have plenty of resources to be working on multiple projects at once.
On the other, it’s very easy for studios to lose their way when spread too thin. There is value in staying focused.
On the third hand, it’s taking an absurdly long time to build their games now. It’s clear the Gamebryo/Creation Engine is no longer fit for purpose. I don’t give a fuck about object permanence for 10,000 cheese wheels. I want fewer loading screens, much better facial animations, much better lighting, much better performance, and MUCH better collision handling. Unreal proved YEARS ago that functionally unlimited polygon assets were achievable with good performance with dynamic mesh loading. Gamebryo is absolutely shitting the bed with the assets in Starfield. Maybe it wouldn’t take 5+ years to build these games if they weren’t shackled to Gamebryo.
It’s weird, because they absolutely need to switch things up… but also they have a winning formula and so long as the games sell they will never adapt.
For me, the biggest fault isn’t the tech itself (at least not directly), but the game design. Every time they strap another system to that Frankenstein’s monster of an engine, those systems need to be justified in gameplay, which is harder to do the more there are. As everything grows in scale and scope, each component, whether locations or mechanics, feels less individually compelling. Then they hide mechanics behind the tech tree, which solves one issue by focusing the player experience, but now the quests feel even more bland because they need to appeal to every possible build.
Yeah, but they can make money off Skyrim re-released until then to give them plenty of breathing room on the release date.
You haven’t missed much. Since then we’ve had an aggressively mediocre Fallout game, and a horrible Fallout game. Oh, and a mobile Fallout game!
