Fans won't hear anything about The Elder Scrolls 6 for years, Pete Hines says

The Elder Scrolls 6 trailer screenshot
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield might be right around the corner, but that doesn’t mean that gamers can expect to hear any updates about The Elder Scrolls 6 any time soon, according to Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines.

In a new interview with Vandal, Hines was asked if, following the release of Starfield, we’ll be given any news about the highly anticipated new Elder Scrolls installment. In short, not for the foreseeable future.

“Let’s see, over time, but in years to come,” Hines told Vandal (translated from Spanish). “We have made the focus of everything at all of our studios making [Starfield] the best it can possibly be. And yes, people are working on The Elder Scrolls 6, but this is what the studio is focusing on.

“So no, no time soon are you going to be hearing anything at all about The Elder Scrolls 6,” he continued. “Starfield is our focus for now and will continue to be our focus for some time before we talk about anything else.”

Despite this claim, Hines did share one significant update about The Elder Scrolls 6, and that’s the fact that it’s left pre-production. “It's in development, but it's in early development,” Hines clarified.

The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced half a decade ago in 2018 (yes, that was five years ago, sorry), and Bethesda hasn’t given any confirmation as to when we can expect the title to release. Given Hines’ latest claim, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen any time soon. 

However, it certainly sounds like Starfield will help keep us busy in the meantime. Hines himself recently said that after around 150-160 hours of playtime, he still hasn’t “come close” to completing all of its content. Prepare yourself for a hefty backlog, then.

For more upcoming games, be sure to take a look at our roundup of new Xbox Series X games. If you want to pre-order Starfield ahead of its release, you can find out everything you need to know in our Starfield pre-order guide.

Catherine Lewis
News Writer, TechRadar Gaming

Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.