$500 million budgets probably. Things are different now. Video games aren't a form of art or interactive storytelling or anything creative. They're simply made to make a profit, that's it. Anything else is just a useful side effect. That's why indie games hit different. People with stories to tell instead of dollars to make. Movies are the same way too.

Looks like those that do badly are those that went on an acquisition spree over the last years.

I think Nintendo has moved to niche, their gaming selection is so bad.

Well, so f as r it worked really well for Bethesda. They sold Skyrim 10 times to everyone.

They could make a new Halo, that goes past even normal numbers. They don’t even have to settle for billions of gamers. They could call it…Halo Infinite.

Depends how you look at it. Obsidian was more like a modding team than a game development team for New Vegas. They had the engine and all mechanics ready to use. All they had to do was minor tweaks and new content. So essentially modding, not developing a game.

Arguably, most of 'game development' these days is more akin to 'modding' from 10+ years ago, so the terms kind of lose their meaning. But New Vegas was made in 2008-2010, so I think it fits.

As we can see years later, games made by Obsidian from scratch aren't nearly as good. Perhaps what made New Vegas great was the mix of Bethesda and Obsidian. Or maybe Obsidian just lost their edge, like most studios, sadly.

I'm a huge Elder Scrolls fan. I met my partner on Elder Scrolls Online. I have pretty much zero faith in Elder Scrolls VI being any good.

Yea it was a very short window for development, 18 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas

I mean fuck, better than what they've been doing.

Its code for more horse armour and online services that they can milk for years

I mean if they did the Oblivion Remastered with Skyrim, that's easy fucking money.

Or even Fallout 3 & 4.

But making games costs money. Corporations are supposed to make money for their shareholders, not spend it!

You dont need to worry about ES7, with the amount of time ES6 is taking, ES7 wont be within out lifetimes

Let me preface this with the fact that I like Bethesda games, fallout, Skyrim, starfield, I enjoy them all.

Does anyone else feel like they are all kinda the same game.

• elder scrolls: medieval Bethesda game
• fallout: apocalypse Bethesda game
• starfield: space Bethesda game

They share like 90% of the game mechanics.

I could see cutting back on these if they were all radically different, but they all few so similar to me, almost interchangeable.

But I’m sure not innovating and pumping out cash grab sequel after cash grab sequel will work, that works really well right? In a few years we can all read the “how Bethesda got beat by {scrappy upstart that actually provided interesting new games}” articles that try to piece together the mystery.

Skyrim > 4 years > Fallout 4 > 4 Years > Fallout 76 (yes, it was Todd's team that made the map and original quests) > 4+1 years > Starfield

Seriously, it isn't like Bethesda has a long list of IP to work with here.

Other than Elder Scrolls and Fallout (which they should already be assumed to be focusing on to begin with), the only other IPs that are still alive would be DOOM and maybe Wolfenstein,

Dishonored is dead, Quake is dead, they shuttered Tango so no continuation of Hi-Fi Rush or Ghostwire, RAGE is dead.