Five years after it was originally teased, Elder Scrolls 6 is now finally in the early stages of development, but the developers have bad news: its release is still five-plus years away due to the team’s focus on Starfield.
Starfield may be launching only a few short days away, on Sept. 5, but this extensive Bethesda project may be one of the reasons why the next Elder Scrolls won’t be released for quite some time.
Phil Spencer, the big boss at Microsoft, admitted during the Microsoft FTC Trial that the same devs who have been working on Starfield are the ones who will be working on ES6. As Starfield is launching this year, it took priority. As such, he said, ES6 is still five-plus years away from actually launching.
On top of that, it’s “unclear on what platforms it’s launching on.” But if their history is anything to go by, we can assume it will be another Xbox exclusive.
Unfortunately, this news means that for those who were hyped about the ES6 teaser at E3 2018, we’ll eventually have been waiting at least 10 years for the Elder Scrolls sequel to arrive.
None of this is even set in stone yet either apparently, at least according to other Bethesda brass. In an interview by Vandal with Pete Hines, a vice president at Bethesda, on Aug. 29, he revealed ES6 is now in its earliest stages. Seeing as it took devs over 10 years to develop Starfield, their aim for a 2028 ES6 release may be on the hopeful side.
Related: Todd Howard suggests he regrets announcing Elder Scrolls 6 so early
So, as much as we were hoping for a much closer release date, it looks like ES6 won’t be released anytime soon.
