Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls 6 back in 2018, and the game is still a long time off. According to Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith, who has since left the company, director Todd Howard only agreed to announce the game so early because fans were coming with “pitchforks and torches” inquiring about the game. Howard has subsequently questioned whether or not he made the right decision in announcing the game so early.
“You have to remember, the company took years of hits for not talking about The Elder Scrolls 6. I mean years of hits. Because Todd’s opinion, one which I share by the way, is that the video game industry has short memories. Those companies that start touting their games years ahead of time? Actually, they screw themselves,” Nesmith told MinMaxx. “The best time to start talking about it is six months before release.”
For Fallout 4, Bethesda announced the game in June 2015 and launched the game about five months later in November of that year. Before that, Skyrim was announced in December 2010 before launching less than a year later. The playbook has changed in recent times, though, as Bethesda announced Starfield in 2018 and just launched the game in September 2023.