No, I don't. There's far too much value in Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Fallout has a very successful Amazon show, and Wolfenstein has an upcoming Amazon show. Obsidian, with the reputation of being the development studio who makes a better Fallout, has now been bundled in with Bethesda to work on Fallout. If you ask me, I don't think they're anywhere near closing down, but they sure seem to be boxed up with a bow on it to be sold to Amazon.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
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Never underestimate Microsoft's ability to ruin something good. They won't shut down but by the time it ends up being sold off it will be a shadow of its former self.
Not yet.
Microsoft usually squeezes out a couple games in their studio purchases before dumping them. What we'll probably see is them push for a fallout game being worked alongside TES6 to capitalize on the TV show's success. Quality may suffer with that split attention from a studio used to doing one monolithic game at a time
There's probably a AAA crash coming. Bethesda probably gets shutdown then. What I don't know is if that crash will happen before they release another game. I wouldn't be surprised if MS leaves the gaming market entirely with the crash.
AAA costs too much to produce and rarely makes its money back. Indie is flooded with vibe coded Unity crap. The middle is lost in the sea with all of the above. Wouldn't be surprised if there is a bit of a reset in the coming years, especially after the rumored $1200-$1800 project helix pricing.
I don't see consoles making it more than another 1-2 generations. PC is hitting cost and performance parity without the lock in.
I wouldn’t say that Fallout 4 wasn’t a success, its first week sales outpaced Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas. It just has less of a cult following conpared to the previous Fallouts.
Still, it’s been 11 years…
The only games to come out since then are Fallout 76 and Starfield. Here’s hoping they learned from the blunders that accompanied each of those.
financially not a loss but how many years can a studio coast on that money and glory before someone asks them to do their job and make more money?
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The old jank engine is honestly pretty good for atmospheric storytelling.
Sure, Cyberpunk is shiny and all, but there's something about Bethesda.
Idk how to explain, corpses in Fallout never despawn. That item you hid in the bush? it's still there 300h later. It has a certain persistence that isn't that common.
It can also feel stale real quick though.
Especially when you get into janky bugs.
But all this needs an interesting premise, story and vision.
I don't have much hopes for whatever they release next.
Nor from any AAA.
Games is art and art is incompatible with the corpo mindset of most game companies these days.
I'd rather play something that was made with passion than with greed.
Idk how to explain, corpses in Fallout never despawn. That item you hid in the bush? it's still there 300h later. It has a certain persistence that isn't that common.
That's not necessarily a good thing world building wise, I'd certainly expect bodies to eventually get eaten / buried / rot for example.
Agreed, but less so than corpses disappearing under eyes.
it takes 30d in game for cells to reset fyi
Like how RDR2 does it with animal carcasses.
I don't disagree, I actually mod Skyrim in my free time, but that doesn't make the games successful. Starfield basically flopped, and made many fans lose excitement for a new Bethesda game.
Good, sell the IP to Michael Kirkbride and let him cook.
Nah, do not sell it to him.
Give him full rights to adapt the story with full rights to any/all residual profits, and redirect his income to mandatory purchases of cocaine, mushrooms and booze so that when he writes the next games story it will light a fire in everyone's minds brighter than anything that could possibly exist in our reality.
This dude seeks CHIM.
Bethesda does not belong to EA so it‘s not as likely. EA will likely go before Bethesda does.
Microsoft has an equally appalling graveyard of studios it bought up and did nothing with, in its history
Yeah but EA is toast. Like actually done. They did not survive Saudi deal and the debt they were loaded with. Every studio of theirs will be closed and all IPs sold shortly.
XBOX shuttered Arkane and other studios already. they're in cost cutting mode.
That‘s completely different from seizing to exist, though. EA got murdered from the inside in the dirty Saudi deal. Microsoft is in a completely different position so comparing Bioware with Bethesda is nonsense.
This might be controversial but Todd has to go. His ego has gone to his head and progress has stifled under his tenure.
They banked really hard on Starfield being the game that'll determine how things will go for them. Starfield ended up not being that good of a reception because it was simply overhyped. Now everyone's expectations on TES VI and Fallout 5 are all but lukewarm because they're expecting more of the same which is Bethesda's model.
But really, Starfield was that game for Bethesda and it under-delivered.
simply overhyped.
Wasn't it also just not very good? Plenty of games were overhyped or rushed then their rep picked up after people's expectations leveled off, or the game was patched.
I barely ever hear about starfield, and when i do it's only about why it's not good.
Its good enough to spend time moaning about it not being great.
It has two or three issues, and the problem is theyre buried so deep in the design they compromise everything and are essentially unfixable.
The art, setting, bespoke quests are all great. Even the gunplay really, which is a shock but its honestly fun.
Ship building is possibly the best ship design system ever made. And its completely pointless, you will never see the inside of the ship as you teleport to PoIs and barely see the outside.
Inventory management is hell. Building your own mining base depends on very large inventory usage. And the reward is more materials for your inventory to do upgrades to weapons and armour you barely need.
The environmental damage system is incomprehensible so luckily it almost never matters. You take damage breathing in your sealed space suit?? Ridiculous.
The skill system does not feel good, all it can do is unlock stuff above that doesnt feel like it really matters, or gives more inventory management nonsense; or give incremental improvements to damage etc that do not feel good.
And the kicker, Skyrim draws you in by promising and delivering more and more new places to explore and once thats replaced with random pois the entire game collapses around it. When exploring feels pointless the entire game feels pointless.
I really liked Starfield and I played it for about 250 hours, multiple new game plus runs and all. It is not a bad game, I liked the characters and the story and especially the world with its near future NASA-punk setting. And yes, such a setting means that most of space is boring and that travel between planets (or even stars) in real time would take ages, very boring ages with nothing other then darkness around them. So the gravity jump mechanic and the focus on events around planets was only logical.
The big problem that Starfield had was that so many people had the idea or the fantasy that Starfield would be a game that it a) never was and that b) Bethesda never said that it would be.
I play, and I mod and create mods for, games with versions of the creation engine for over 20 years now, I began with Morrowind back then, and I have a very good idea and understanding of how the engine works and where its powers and limitations are, maybe that's why the picture that I had from the game was very close to what the game delivered (loading screens and all) and why I was able to had (and still have) so much fun with the game. There was no huge hype cliff based on wishes and imagination that I could fall down from.
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No, Bioware was sold off by the founders to a private equity firm who eventually sold them off to EA, a company who even then was notorious for shutting game studios down arbitrarily. A sports game company that killed game companies for less, they were always an odd fit and the fact EA kept them for as long as they did was an anomaly.
Bethesda ownership wise and structurally speaking has remained the same from it's peak till today. They have plenty of more flops to give and probably won't care or learn from their mistakes like Bioware because of how unique Bioware's situation was.
Microsoft is also pretty notorious for shutting down development studios they've bought up and let sit around without doing anything with them.
No, no, your a 100% right. But Bethesda isn't a small studio making RPG's for a large sports publisher/developer. They don't just maoe bug filled messes, they also publish them, and wven their own flops often still make more than enough money that they don't have to worry. Much as I hated Starfield, it still made a lot of money for being a hollow Skyrim clone in space.
they are owned by XBOX tho, sure internally it's the same but externally it needs to make them money, and even Arkane wasn't safe from getting axed in spite of the good games.
Arkane was a tragedy, a company that made it's name from immersive sims forced to make a multiplayer, live-serivce game was destined to fail from inception.
I'd like to make this clear, I don't like Bethesda for a lot of reasons I won't get into right now, if there is one thing they're still somehow good at is making money. Microsoft has never cared about review scores so long as their quarterly earnings were met/blown away.
Bethesda does a lot more than make one or 2 games a decade, they're a successful publisher and recently a questionable developer (personally hated Starfield and Fallout 76). They have more in common with EA than they do Bioware in a business sense.
Not any time soon, simply because TES6 is too far along in development to pull the plug, costs have already been sunk. And it's impossible to predict the future after TES6 because that entirely depends on how well the game does.
Its going to move numbers. Serious numbers. No matter how good or bad it is. Its right behind GTA and COD in terms of guaranteed success.
I already know my reaction when it comes out. Really happy we have new TES. Really enjoy making character. Get overwhelmed by overworld and scared off most of the experience. Be disappointed that it wasnt better. Play it on and off for a whole decade anyway. (This entire list remains true if its an ET-level turd or the unquestionable game of the century)
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