The Elder Scrolls 6 is only a ‘mid-size’ game in Microsoft’s eyes

What do you think of when you think of a “medium size” game? Perhaps, if you’re thinking in terms of scope and budget, you’d label something like A Plague Tale: Requiem or Evil West “medium.” They come from a publisher that delights in showing off the benefits of double-A gameplay, after all.

Or maybe I’d be more specific, maybe labeling an indie that went big ‘midsize’ instead; No Man’s Sky, Fall Guys, Among Us.

You don’t think any of Bethesda’s RPG giants (Fallout, Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls Online, and others) are mid-size, do you? They are too big, too well known, released in too many formats. Last we heard, Skyrim alone had sold 30 million copies, and that was in 2016. Medium-sized, indeed.

So it’s pretty surprising to see that Microsoft is willing to say that the successor to Skyrim, widely considered one of the most successful games of all time, is a “mid-sized” game.

The quote comes from Microsoft’s response to a study by the UK’s Competition and Market Authority department, which is trying to decide whether the tech giant’s takeover of Activision Blizzard is healthy for the video game market.

Under the heading, Decisions regarding midsize games are not evidence of Microsoft’s incentives in relation to Call of Duty., Microsoft specifically names The Elder Scrolls 6, identifying it as an example of one of their midsize titles. Please note that some unclear language follows thanks to the legal nature of the document.

“Titles like Elder Scrolls 6 (which is not expected to be released before [REDACTED] with the last installment in the series released in 2011), as well as other future titles, will not imply that Microsoft is giving up $[REDACTED] per year of revenue from PlayStation customers or disenfranchisement approx. [REDACTED] million MAUs on PlayStation,” the statement read.

The thing is, you can argue that The Elder Scrolls 6 is indeed a mid-sized game; Compared to other mega-hits that have broad international appeal to many age groups (read: Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite), The Elder Scrolls 6 Will be of medium size. It might be huge for us, as gamers who can’t escape the impact and legacy of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, for example, but in the eyes of the world, it’s not nearly as important as Candy Crush.

You’ll notice we’ve already seen some crazy stories from this answer today, including Microsoft’s claim that CoD players aren’t ‘unique’ or ‘special’, and their insistence that Xbox exclusives are kind of silly compared to their Sony counterparts.

Expect more information to come out of these documents.