By all indications, The Elder Scrolls 6 is quite while away. The game was announced last E3 to allay fears about the future direction of Bethesda Game Studios, and very little meaningful development work had been done on it. In fact, Starfield is expected to come before it, before development for The Elder Scrolls 6 kicks into full drive.
However, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, the failure of Fallout 76 may have changed plans for Bethesda. Speaking to GamesIndustry about what he expects for the coming year, he said that he expects Bethesda to fast track an Elder Scrolls 6 for 2019, to compensate for the Fallout 76 debacle.
“The flop of Fallout 76 makes a hit more essential for Bethesda, and I expect them to accelerate development of ESVI,” Pachter said, specifying that the game will launch this year (that said, he also noted that he has been making a similar prediction every year for a while now).
Personally, I don’t expect this to happen, given that development on the game hadn’t meaningfully started last we heard, and no matter how much you rush things in the wake of a flop, you can’t ship a functional AAA game with less than a year of development. Unless Bethesda wants to damage its brand even more, The Elder Scrolls 6 to me seems to be a while away.