GoKawiilXbox is currently in a “reset” period that includes laying off around 3,200 employees over the next year, involving deep cuts at beloved studios like id Software and Obsidian Entertainment. Now, in an attempt to show that things are still running fine, the company has announced a slate of upcoming projects at Bethesda Game Studios — which itself was hit with layoffs — including official confirmation that Fallout 5 is in the works.
“We’re investing more deeply in the worlds players love, giving creators a bigger role in shaping their experiences, and bringing our teams closer together so we can get our games into your hands sooner, support them longer, and continue building them alongside you for decades to come,” Bethesda director Todd Howard said in a statement.
There are no details yet on the next Fallout, and it sounds like the project is currently a ways off. Howard says simply that “Fallout is one of our biggest priorities today” and “Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination,“ while the game is described as being in a preproduction phase. The confirmation of the game’s existence comes more than a decade after the launch of Fallout 4, the last mainline entry in the series. Since then, the franchise has expanded with the online spinoff Fallout 76 and a live-action TV series.
Howard also revealed that a new Fallout game is in development at Obsidian, which developed 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas — “We’ll have more to share in the future,” he says — and that remasters of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas are in development, though neither has a release date.
As for The Elder Scrolls VI — which was announced way back in 2018 — Howard didn’t provide a release window but said that the game will utilize the same technology platform as Fallout 5. He says that the game is “our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise.” Howard added that “we’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.”
Oh, and for those wondering about the fate of Starfield, Howard noted that the franchise “remains an important part of our future.”
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma previously said that, as part of the upheaval at Xbox, the brand was going to focus more on its most bankable franchises, with the eventual — and questionable — goal of being “one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day.” This new slate of announcements from Bethesda, which Xbox acquired along with its parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, certainly fits within that model.
However, the timing of the announcements — especially considering Xbox just had a big showcase event in June — also makes it clear that this is a form of damage control, as the company attempts to show that the future isn’t as bleak as it seems following those deep cuts. Bethesda’s new game reveals are coming the same week that ZeniMax employees held a rally in Maryland to protest the layoffs.