A top insider has claimed The Elder Scrolls 6 is still at least two to three years away, as Bethesda Game Studios is impacted by Xbox layoffs.
The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced eight years ago, in 2018, and we still haven’t seen one second of footage – or even a screenshot – outside of its original logo reveal.
Although everyone wants to see some real gameplay, the big question is when it will launch. Rumours have suggested it could arrive in 2027 or 2028, but after its absence at this year’s Xbox Games Showcase, both of those feel pretty optimistic.
Now, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has claimed the Skyrim follow-up still has a lot of time left in the oven, and will be lucky to launch in 2028.
In a live Q&A on Bloomberg yesterday (as shared by X user Idle Sloth), Schreier reportedly said The Elder Scrolls 6 is at least two or three more years away. In other words, 2028 is still on the table, but it could end up coming out in 2029 or later.
If it comes out after 2028, that means it will have taken developer Bethesda Game Studios over 10 years to get the game out the door from its initial announcement – which is a staggering reflection of how poorly managed the series has been over that time. It’ll also be at least 17 years since Skyrim, which is a staggering amount of time given how little Bethesda has produced since then.
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If anything, after the recent Xbox layoffs, it could take even longer. As confirmed on Bluesky by the Bethesda Game Studios Union account, the developer lost ‘dozens of programmers, artists, designers, and testers’ as part of the cuts earlier this week. ‘Many of whom worked at [Bethesda Game Studios] for decades,’ it added.
While it’s unclear exactly how many people have been affected, other studios like Obsidian and id Software have seen drastic reductions to their workforce, with the latter losing 50% of its staff.
According to reports, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is looking to accelerate development on Halo, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout as part of her future vision. No doubt she’d like The Elder Scrolls 6 to come out earlier but it’s unclear what she could do to speed it up.
Along with The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda is also working on Fallout 5, but that’s even further away. A remaster of Fallout 3 is also rumoured to be in development, akin to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, but that’s never been confirmed or shown in public.
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