In news that isn't likely to be much of a surprise to anyone at this point, a newly unearthed Microsoft court document has confirmed The Elder Scrolls 6 won't be making its way to PlayStation when it eventually shows up in 2026 or beyond.
05.09.2023 - 18:23 / destructoid.com / Phil Spencer / Pete Hines
While Bethesda may have hit a slam dunk with Starfield, the same can hardly be said about Arkane Studios’ Redfall. Having launched just a few months prior to Starfield, Redfall was met with a wall of well-warranted critique. Yet, according to Bethesda’s head of publishing, the book hasn’t yet closed on Redfall.
While many might’ve expected to see Bethesda and Microsoft drop Redfall like a hot potato and never talk about it again, Bethesda’s Pete Hines says to expect the opposite. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Hines said that Bethesda will keep working on Redfall. This comes after the Xbox Head of Gaming, Phil Spencer, voiced his disappointment in the negative reaction to Redfall.
“We are always in a process of learning, so that’s not new for us,” Hines said. “We don’t like failing to meet our players’ expectations. At the same time, we are the same company that has had launches that didn’t go the way we wanted, and we don’t quit or abandon stuff just because it didn’t start right.”
“We’re going to get it to be a good game because we know, as a first-party studio, Game Pass lives forever,” Hines said. “There will be people ten years from now who are going to join Game Pass, and Redfall will be there.”
Redfall‘s pedigree—Prey, Dishonored, and Deathloop—was undeniable. Yet rather than a full-fledged cooperative immersive sim, it was a neither-here-nor-there Borderlands type of thing instead.
These issues did not come about for no reason, of course. Redfall, for one, is eerily similar to Fallout 76 and Wolfenstein: Youngblood; two classic single-player franchises converted into quasi-live-service multiplayer offerings. A sign, perhaps, of Bethesda and its parent company, ZeniMax Media, trying to branch its IPs and dev studios in a different direction. Theorycrafting aside, Redfall also reportedly dealt with unclear direction and other developmental issues, meaning it might’ve never had a chance to truly shine.
Many will remember that Fallout 76 did, indeed, face similar critiques from day one onwards. Yet, with Season 13 well underway, the game has turned things around and persevered. Microsoft’s Sea of Thieves has done very well for itself over the years, too. In other words, the precedent certainly exists. The only question that remains, then, is whether Arkane will have what it takes to pull Redfall out of the gutter as Bethesda’s higher-ups believe could happen.
New content update announcement for Redfall haven’t yet been made.
In news that isn't likely to be much of a surprise to anyone at this point, a newly unearthed Microsoft court document has confirmed The Elder Scrolls 6 won't be making its way to PlayStation when it eventually shows up in 2026 or beyond.
According to a new court document revealed from the FTC v. Microsoft case, The Elder Scrolls 6 is expected to be released sometime during or after 2026, and is seemingly planned to be released solely on PC and Xbox (via The Verge).
«There will be people ten years from now who are going to join Game Pass, and Redfall will be there.»
There’s been a bad trend in video games over the last several years that gamers are truly tired of. We’re speaking of developers launching titles that aren’t ready for release and then expecting gamers to play them, buy them, or stay with them despite their “buggy states.” An excellent example of this is Redfall. The game by Arkane Studios, who had an excellent track record before this title, was an unmitigated disaster due to how buggy and boring the game was at launch. The title was dead on arrival, and it’s stayed that way ever since.
Bethesda's head of publishing, Pete Hines, has said that game bugs are inevitable and they ultimately allow the studio to lean into player freedom.
Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines, has affirmed that Arkane’s co-op FPS Redfall won’t be abandoned, and that “we're going to get it to be a good game”.
Bethesda‘s head of publishing Pete Hines says the company will make Redfall “a good game”, despite an underwhelming reception at launch.
Bethesda Game Studios’ titles have always had a reputation for being technically rough, buggy games, and though Starfield is very clearly the most polished a BGS game has been at launch in a long, long time, it still has its fair share of technical hiccups.
Pete Hines, publishing head at Bethesda Softworks, has stated that the company has no plans to give up on Redfall, and that the game will become good down the line with updates bringing in improvements. The company hopes to raise the quality of the game to the same extent as it has other titles like The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76.
Bethesda Softworks publishing head Pete Hines has reassured players that Arkane isn't giving up on Redfall, despite its lukewarm reception on launch earlier this year. In fact, he's confident it will be a good game people want to play on Game Pass ten years from now.
Never has a Bethesda game been released without at least a few bugs. We all know how it goes… we either cease to play Skyrim because our AI companions won’t stop running into traps, or we embrace the wonderful weirdness and turn it into streaming content. And it’s not just us players who feel the need to cut Bethesda games some slack for their shortcomings.
Bethesda's Senior VP of Global Marketing and Communications, Pete Hines, wants people to skip sleep and stay up in order to play Starfield.