Highly anticipated role-playing game The Elder Scrolls 6 will not come to PlayStation 5, according to documents submitted in a Microsoft court case.
These documents were produced by Microsoft as part of its US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) bid to let the company acquire games publishing giant Activision Blizzard, as reported by The Verge.
In a move that should surprise few Xbox fans, a chart notes The Elder Scrolls 6 will come to Xbox and PC, but not PlayStation or any other platform.
This document also suggests we still have quite a wait for the game. It pins the release date at a vague “TBC, but expected 2026 or later”.
The same chart also says the Starfield launch was pegged for “H1 2023”, when it firmly landed in the second half of 2023 in reality, after its final release date was announced in March 2023. This is not up-to-date, recent intelligence.
What is The Elder Scrolls 6?
A teaser trailer for The Elder Scrolls 6 was published all the way back in 2018 as part of the game’s announcement. Since then, we have heard little about the title, and the entire studio strategy has likely changed significantly.
That trailer was released roughly three years before The Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda Softworks was acquired by Microsoft, in 2021.
At the time of writing, we are coming up for 12 years since the original release of the last core entry in the series, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Roll back 12 years from Skyrim and you’ll find in that time Bethesda Softworks published both The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. These were the titles that saw the series begin to gain real mainstream appeal, after its relatively humble beginnings in the 90s. Games take a lot longer to make than they used to.
Is Bethesda remaking Oblivion?
Other court documents surfaced as part of the FTC versus Microsoft case show more Elder Scrolls developments are, or at least were, in the works, too.
A remaster of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was once pencilled in for 2022, another remake of sister title Fallout 3 was planned for 2024.
An Oblivion remake was rumoured previously at the tail end of July, spurred by a deleted post by a former Virtuos Games employee, according to Windows Central.
Virtuos Games is reportedly the developer producing the remake. It previously worked on the Spacer’s Choice remaster of The Outer Worlds. That is a game made by Obsidian, which developed Bethesda Softworks fan favourite Fallout: New Vegas.
In more solid, recent news, current Bethesda Softworks big hitter Starfield has become the fifth biggest video game launch in Europe this year, according to Gamesindustry.biz.
Its week one sales have only been beaten by Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo 4 and, at number one, Hogwarts Legacy. These figures don’t account for the many people playing the title on Xbox Game Pass, either.
There will be even greater expectations of The Elder Scrolls VI, given Skyrim has sold upwards of 60 million copies to date, making it one of the top 10 sellers of all time.
