Don’t expect The Elder Scrolls 6 to be out for at least another five years, says Xbox head

if you expected that The Elder Scrolls 6 might be out soon enough after Starfield, dismiss those hopes as it’s still at least “five more years” away.

Earlier this month, it was the fifth anniversary of the announcement of The Elder Scrolls 6. Now, as part of the ongoing lawsuit between the Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft regarding the latter’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, he was asked Xbox boss Phil Spencer about The Elder Scrolls 6 and what platforms it will release on. “It’s so far away that it’s hard to understand what the platforms will be…” Spencer said (via Stephen Totilo of Axios). “We are talking about a game that is more than five years away.”

Totilo also noted that Spencer seemed “fuzzy on whether he previously made a public statement saying it would be Xbox-only.”

Spencer also seemed to hint that The Elder Scrolls 6 will possibly release on a next-gen Xbox: according to totilo, “Spencer said she didn’t even know what Microsoft platforms it would be on,” which certainly sounds like she doesn’t think it’ll only be on Xbox Series X/S. As part of some of the published court documents, Microsoft stated that it expects the next generation of consoles to arrive approximately in 2028.

Honestly, considering how little we know about the game right now, it really isn’t that surprising that the game is still so far along. Obviously, the question arises as to why the game was announced so early, and the most likely answer is that it was a surefire way for Bethesda to say it’s working on the game and will hire you. Bethesda also said that in 2020 it will be years before we have any real news on the game.

Microsoft has a couple of big hurdles to jump through to get the Activision Blizzard acquisition done, one of them being this lawsuit with the FTC in the US blocking the merger. Although Microsoft has filed an appeal against the block of the CMA, whose hearing is scheduled for July.