Bethesda has been known to dabble in the mobile realm in the last decade, creating off-shoot titles that connect to their core franchises like The Elder Scrolls: Blades, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Mighty DOOM, and Fallout Shelter. Now it seems as though they have something else in the pipeline with Bethesda Game Studios’ head, Todd Howard expressing a strong positive sentiment about a new, unannounced game that is in development
Speaking on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Howard declared that he was “in love” with the new, yet-to-be-announced title, and while he didn’t share any specific details, he did discuss how the game will be targeting a younger audience who is comfortable with using a mobile device for longer sessions. Speaking about the project, Howard said in full
We have a new mobile game that we’re working on that we haven’t announced yet that I’m in love with.
There are a couple of things that you approach on mobile. Now, I can give you sort of the classic mobile gaming thing and then what we do. You know, classic mobile gaming is really for short play sessions because for the amount of people you’re going to get, the number that have the amount of time to sit there for a long time and play it like a console game or a PC game is lower because people are playing mobile games on the move or whatever.
And how it onboards you, because obviously most of them are free, so the tutorial, how the tutorial works, how it gets you into the game, because you haven’t bought it, you haven’t done this investment of buying it and then saying no I’m going to learn it, people don’t care, so really understanding how they get into the game, those two things are really the magic to mobile gaming.
We have found though with our games, particularly Fallout Shelter, people will sit there for an hour or two, like they will just sit there and play it, like large numbers of people will play it for hours a day. You know if you look at kids these days, they can stare at their phone for hours, that’s all they do, that’s where they watch everything, so it’s also like a demographic thing. The younger audience, they would rather sit and stare at their phone than play it on a big screen
Perhaps with Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards only days away, we’ll soon learn about this new mobile title, and whether it connects with Starfield, The Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Fallout, or something else altogether.