Bethesda Game Studios has undeniably felt the impact of Microsoft's recent plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox – but according to the company, The Elder Scrolls 6 is still chugging along just fine.
The studio reveals as much in quite a lengthy new post over on Twitter, confirming that The Elder Scrolls 6 is currently Bethesda's primary focus – and the developers feel pretty confident about the new RPG, too. That and the next Fallout game, which we now know is for sure happening.
"Our teams are now developing The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 on Creation Engine 3, a shared technology platform we've been building since Starfield's launch," writes Bethesda. "It allows our teams to support multiple projects simultaneously with new tools, rendering, and systems that define our games."
This lines up with what we know about Bethesda's in-house engine – Todd Howard said the devs are "very happy where the tech is and where it's going" early this year, describing how Bethesda has "handled" the new Creation Engine "better than we ever have" thanks to lessons learned from Starfield.
A NOTE FROM BETHESDA GAME STUDIOSWe love making these worlds as much as you love playing in them. Today, we want to share what's next for Bethesda Game Studios and what you can expect from us in the years ahead.For forty years, we've built games that have entertained almost… pic.twitter.com/slD4pMWqW1July 17, 2026
The studio's current thread continues, describing where the new Fallout and Elder Scrolls are in terms of development.
"Fallout 5 is currently in preproduction. The Elder Scrolls 6 is our primary development focus today, with the majority of our team currently working on the next chapter of the franchise. With over 65 million copies sold, players are still exploring Skyrim 15 years later, but we know it's been a very long wait for the sequel."
That's an understatement – but Bethesda's words here are reassuring nonetheless. It has been well over a decade since Skyrim changed the RPG genre forever, leaving us all craving the next Elder Scrolls, after all.
But, as the studio confirms, "The next chapter is on the way. We're where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day."
It's bittersweet, with all things considered – especially amid all of the layoffs. The company's union representatives reported a big loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers, and testers," which would imply quite the impact on development.
Devs affected by the layoffs also said that making new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games would "be harder than ever now" following Microsoft's Xbox cuts, so... yeah.
Here's hoping Bethesda truly is cooking with The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, and that former devs land on their feet, too.
Elder Scrolls Online is "not going to be able to put out the amount of content at the speed" it was, former dev says following Xbox layoffs.
