Elder Scrolls 6 Not in Development Right Now

Given the massive success and enduring appeal of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it seems like all but a certainty that Bethesda Game Studios will eventually make The Elder Scrolls VI. But it's not in development right now, according to Bethesda marketing executive Pete Hines.

Here's what Hines had to say in a recent Twitter exchange (via DigitalSpy):

The "We aren't working on TES6 at the moment" isn't totally clear. It could be that pre-production, but not full production, is already underway. Pre-production on projects often begins long before actual production gets started, so it's possible that some work towards the development of the unannounced game has been done. This is not confirmed, however.

A Guerrilla Games developer told us at E3 that pre-production on Horizon: Zero Dawn started six years ago, in 2010, but the studio has only been in full production for 2.5 years. From the sound of Hines' statement, however, it could be that even pre-production on the project has not started. We also wouldn't expect a new Elder Scrolls game to be announced on Twitter.

Skyrim, which was released in November 2011 to critical acclaim, has sold more than 20 million copies and a remastered version is coming later this year.

As for what Bethesda Game Studios is working on if it's not a new mainline Elder Scrolls game, the studio is cooking up "three big and crazy" projects, according to Fallout 4 and Skyrim director Todd Howard. He's since walked back that comment, however.

"I should have never said a number because we have so many things. You could add it up in different ways," he said in an interview. "You could say it's bigger or smaller. They're a long way off. I think the larger point was, no one should expect to hear about those [games] anytime soon. We always overlap projects. We just have more going on now than we had before."

Following the big success of mobile game Fallout Shelter, Bethesda plans to make more mobile titles in the future. A new Elder Scrolls spinoff game, The Elder Scrolls Legends, is coming out for mobile devices and PC later this year.

Looking further out, Howard said previously said he has "lots of ideas" for what might come next after Fallout 4. Another area that Bethesda is looking at is virtual reality, though Howard made it clear that it is still very much early days and it remains to be seen how much attention Bethesda will give to it.

"We're exploring some things [in VR]. We'll see where that heads," he said. "We don't want to talk about it quite yet until we've figured some things out."

If The Elder Scrolls VI ever comes out, what would you like to see from it? Let us know in the comments below.