Bethesda has a diverse portfolio filled with critically acclaimed franchises and industry-defining titles, however, the studio knows they can’t hold the same sales and performance standards across all their franchises.
Bethesda Vice President of Public Relations and Marketing Pete Hines was featured in an interview with GamesIndustry, where he clarified the studio clearly has different performance standards for each franchise, giving an example of how they can’t hold titles like Prey and Dishonored and compare them with the success achieved by Fallout or Elder Scrolls.
Yeah but lots of things don’t sell as well as Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Our belief is that we want to aim for the right goal of what we’re making and what those franchises can do. If you hold up every game as if it’s gotta do what Fallout and Skyrim did, then you’re [not] gonna make many games because very few games will do that. Like, Doom didn’t do that but Doom still sold awesome so it’s just about what’s the right size dev team, dev cycle, size of the audience and are we doing a good job of delivering that.
What do you think of Hines’ statement? It is a very sensible statement indeed.