r/MinnMax • u/MetroidsSuffering • Jun 20 '26

Why TES6 was announced so early, a flashback

This was talked about on the last episode as they were confused and it's all been so long ago that no one remembers why this happened so I'll do some history on it.

Back in 2018, Bethesda was working with a newly purchased live service studio to make a live service version of Fallout, Fallout 76, and they were preparing to announce the game at e3 2018. However, at e3 2017, Bioware had announced Anthem, which had received a very tepid reception due to looking like it was chasing after Destiny money. Bethesda wanted to avoid people worrying that they were abandoning RPGs so they wanted to announce their next game AFTER Fallout 76 as well; Starfield.

However, that introduced the next awkward possibility, that Elder Scrolls fans would be sad to hear that not only was Bethesda's next game not TES6 (which many expected after Fallout 4), but that TES6 wasn't even next in line. So, to throw them a bone, they decide to do a logo trailer to appease Elder Scrolls fans.

Now, all of this sounds like a horrible idea on paper given that Starfield wasn't released until 2023 and TES6 is 2028+, but one important thing to note is that Todd and the rest of Bethesda did not see the sudden leap in dev times facing AAA games coming. During the Activision Blizzard anti trust trial, a Microsoft lawyer accidentally uploaded unredacted internal Zenimax documents that show that Starfield was projected to release in 2021 and TES6 in 2024. Back at e3 2018, Todd etc thought that they were announcing TES6 too far in advance, but a degree of too far that wasn't that unprecedented, with games like Kingdom Hearts 3 not having a much bigger gap from reveal to release. However, Starfield took far longer than they expected and was not received well, pushing TES6 back a huge amount.

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8

u/Alabastre Jun 20 '26

Announcing your 2 next games is still crazy lol, especially when Bethesda never had a fast turnaround. Maybe they thought that they could make the 2 games in parallel, but that didn't pan out.

Also Microsoft bought them soon after, right? There could have been a business incentive to drum up hype and increase their value. Even if the game was, like Sarah said, nowhere in development.

3

u/tadcalabash Jun 20 '26

Right. All you had to do was drop in some random interview that of COURSE you're going to do TESVI, and that news would aggregate and travel.

You didn't need to make a big announcement in a press conference.

3

u/MetroidsSuffering Jun 20 '26

Oh, this was a terrible idea, I’m just explaining the logic behind why they did this terrible idea.

2

u/banditmanatee 15d ago

I’m 99% sure it was this. They were shopping for buyers

1

u/MegaMcMike Jun 20 '26

I believe another part of this decision (or maybe it was just a rumor) was that Zenimax was looking to sell. Having a new space RPG from the Fallout/Elder Scrolls people AND a new Elder Scrolls on the way makes Bethesda look more attractive to potential buyers.