Bethesda surprised everyone when they announced The Elder Scrolls 6 at E3 2018. It was surprising because no one saw it coming, and it was also surprising because the game’s years away. It’s game for next generation consoles, so a few people were a bit taken aback by the fact that it had been announced already. Bethesda have already explained why they did so, but apparently, the announcement has had some other positive effects as well.
Pete Hines, VP of marketing at Bethesda, was asked in an interview with Yahoo if the announcement has allowed other games being made by the publisher to breathe, and he said that while that’s not necessarily the case, it has staved off constant questions about when the game would be confirmed.
“I don’t know about ‘letting them breathe’,” said Hines, “but it does help reduce the number of times we talk about anything as a publisher and somebody replies with: ‘when is The Elder Scrolls VI. Arkane announces their next thing and people ask “when is The Elder Scrolls VI?” and it doesn’t have anything to do with it. But at least now we have formally talked about The Elder Scrolls VI and given context, it does minimise some of that.”
Of course, instead of constantly asking about when the game will be announced, people will not be constantly asking about when it will release. As it turns out, though, Bethesda already knows the answer to that question. They’re just not gonna tell us about it anytime soon.