We’ve all seen those memes of old people playingThe Elder Scrolls 6, usually captioned something like ‘TES fans when Bethesda finally releases a new game’. Maybe it’snot so far from the truth. A new document shown in the Microsoft-Activision gamer lawsuit revealed that Xbox is working on a title for an existing franchise that will take ten years to develop.“Halo Infinite, a recent title from Microsoft’s first-party Halo franchise, was in production [redacted], and cost almost [redacted] million to develop and bring to market,” the document reads. “Other Triple-A games take even longer to develop. For instance, according to one Microsoft executive, [redacted], a forthcoming title from the [redacted] franchise, may take a decade to develop.“RELATED:Why Is Everyone On Nintendo’s Side Over The Bowser Hacker Case?Fans already have their theories as to what this franchise and game could be. Some speculate the aforementioned TES6, butFallout 5(or a spin-off akin to New Vegas),Gears of War, andFablewere all thrown out there as possible answers given the size of the redacted box.
It’s worth noting that these games wouldn’t necessarily be starting their ten-year development cycles today. It simply means that, by the end of development, it could have taken ten years to finish. The Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production right now, whileFable 4 has been in development for a few years, so we might not be waiting as long as 2033 to get our hands on whatever this game may be.
This document came to light thanks to the “Gamer Lawsuit” which wasthrown out of court last month. For context, while the FTC sued, and the European Commission and CMA launched investigations, ten gamers also raised an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in a bid to stop the Activision merger. It was dismissed as the judge deemed that the suit “does not plausibly allege the merger creates a reasonable probability of anticompetitive effects in any relevant marker”.
While the suit didn’t have much of an impact on the Activision-Microsoft merger, it did bring this file to light, and despite it giving us little more than breadcrumbs to work with, it’s something to speculate on. TES6 having a ten-year-development cycle certainly makes sense given that it was teased nearly five years ago in 2018, but it could be anything under the Xbox umbrella, so we’ll have to wait and see.
