Todd Howard says Bethesda still treating The Elder Scrolls 6 as priority

Todd Howard said the majority of Bethesda Game Studios is now working on The Elder Scrolls 6, and that the studio knows the game has to get it right after years of silence. Howard has been unusually blunt about the long runway around the sequel, even joking that people should mostly pretend the 2018 announcement never happened because Bethesda has shown almost nothing since.

That original reveal came at Bethesda’s E3 press conference on June 10, 2018, and the teaser ran only a few seconds, showing little more than the logo. Howard described the game then as “the game after” Starfield, making it clear The Elder Scrolls 6 was coming well down the release line. Since then, Bethesda has moved slowly but not invisibly: it confirmed in August 2023 that the game had left pre-production for early development, Pete Hines said fans would not hear much more soon because Starfield had the studio’s attention, and in March 2024 Bethesda said the team was already playing early builds.

That timeline matters because the sequel is now carrying one of the biggest expectations loads in the business. Phil Spencer said in June 2023, during Microsoft’s hearing over the Activision Blizzard deal, that the game was still “five plus years away,” a reminder that the release was nowhere near in sight even after the reveal had become a meme. Matt Booty has since framed Microsoft’s approach as restraint, saying it wants to show The Elder Scrolls 6 at “the right moment,” when it can present the best version of the game and do so closer to launch.

Bethesda also has to follow Skyrim, which launched on November 11, 2011 and had sold more than 60 million copies worldwide by 2024. That makes The Elder Scrolls 6 less a normal sequel than a test of whether Bethesda can deliver technical stability, a richer world simulation, responsive RPG systems, and a clearer identity for the studio’s post-Starfield future. After a teaser that became the textbook example of announcing too early, the next real look at The Elder Scrolls 6 will need to do more than finally exist. It will have to make the wait feel earned.