Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim debuted to rave reviews and was an absolutely critical and commercial success in 2011.
However, a sixth game in this fantasy series is not yet in active development. Bethesda marketing executive Pete Hines has spoken out and said the studio will likely make the game in due time.
“The Elder Scrolls VI isn’t in development,” Hines said on Twitter. “We simply said we would make it eventually.”
This past June, Bethesda confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI was not in development, with Hines stating, “We aren’t working on TES6 at the moment.”
However there is some ambiguity that this statement carries. It could be that pre-production, but not full production is underway. Pre-production usually begins long before the actual production begins.
So, it is completely feasible that some work towards the development of the unannounced game has been completed but remains unconfirmed.
The Elder Scrolls VI also was discussed in an interview that Hines recently gave to MMORPG.
“This studio [Bethesda Game Studios] is not a vending machine,” he said. “They’re not a two-button vending machine, where first we press Elder Scrolls and then we press Fallout, and then we press Elder Scrolls and then we press Fallout… They’re an incredibly talented studio of creative people. They’ve now made four games in a row, all of which were named Game of the Year, and they have a right to decide what they’re interested in working on next and which direction they want to go.”
A wise statement indeed, and it’s only respectful of the game company that their decision be understood and to leave them to figure out what path to take next.