Bethesda Boss Gives Update On Starfield In Microsoft-Bethesda Briefing

Bethesda Game Studios managing director Ashley Cheng has shared a little bit of information on the development practices behind Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI. We still don't know much about the games, but we do know they'll both fall under the broad "open-world RPG" umbrella Bethesda is known for.

During the Bethesda-Microsoft briefing, Cheng said the team working on Starfield is uniquely positioned to succeed because the developers themselves have worked together for years on other open-world RPGs in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises.

"Today, the team working on Starfield have all worked on several open-world RPGs together. This shared experience and chemistry doesn't happen overnight. It takes a long time and it's a lot of hard work," Cheng said.

Cheng didn't mention The Elder Scrolls VI by name, but the game's logo flashed on-screen when Cheng spoke about the upcoming games from Bethesda Game Studios.

"As we work on our next-generation of games, I can think of no better place to be than here at Xbox. No matter how crazy the idea, the team at Xbox always says yes, 'Let's try it.'"

Release dates for Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI have not been announced yet, but Starfield will come first, and then The Elder Scrolls VI, according to the current schedule. They are presumably being developed for next-gen hardware and PC.

Also during the event, Cheng said Microsoft has "always been a great partner" for Bethesda Game Studios, going back to the days of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which launched as a console exclusive for Xbox.

"Xbox has been a great partner; always ready to help solve problems, like figuring out how to optimize performance and push the hardware as much as we can," Cheng said.

The roundtable interview between Microsoft and Bethesda also offered some new insight on future games from Bethesda. Xbox boss Phil Spencer said games will release on any platform that has Xbox Game Pass, which cuts out PlayStation and other competing consoles, though arrangements that are already in place will remain intact, so Deathloop will still be a timed console exclusive on PS5. It will likely come to other platforms after a year.

We also learned that a whopping 20 back-catalog Bethesda games are headed to Game Pass today March 12, including Skyrim and many others.

Finally, Microsoft and Bethesda said they will have major updates to share on their future pipelines during an event sometime in the summer.