Games Inbox: Is The Elder Scrolls 6 going to be worth the wait?

The Thursday letters page feels the digital-only future cannot be avoided, as a reader offers a partial defence of Mario Kart Tour.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Slow going
It really is crazy how long The Elder Scrolls 6 is taking and that story on Wednesday, said two to three years was the earliest it could be out. So it’s more likely to be four or five. So it really could end up being 20 years after Skyrim, or near enough. I wouldn’t mind if Bethesda had been obviously busy with other stuff in that time but all they’ve made is Fallout 4 and Starfield – their two worst games.

And yet Todd Howard gets to keep his job and all these poor developers are thrown out on their ear… for what reason? Just because they were there, as far as I can see.

Considering how old-fashioned Starfield was I have a hard time imagining that The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be any different. Bethesda have always been backwards with tech, but Starfield showed they’re getting behind with gameplay as well, as well as dialogue and characters.

I love Skyrim as much as anyone but the long wait, the recent games, and how its developers are being treated has really put me off. I bet The Witcher 4 ends up being the better game anyway.
Lofty

Looking busy
When I worked at Tesco, part of my job was maintaining the fridges and tills, which would often break down. If I didn’t really feel like doing much I would sit in front of an unused till with a screwdriver in my hand, thoughtfully staring and tapping my chin with it and to anyone who saw me it looked like I was busy doing something.

I feel if Bethesda was a person working it would have been me. I wasn’t particularly good at fixing stuff when they did break anyway.
Mark Matthews

No competition
Given that the PC has been acceptably digital-only for ages, presumably the main issue with digital only is the lack of competition on the PSN storefront?

I’m less bothered about the other facets of digital-only, but this is something that worries me, especially with Microsoft offering less direct competition (though with the flattening of performance, Nintendo may step into that gap). Is this something that would drag in the competition commission to review?

Presumably if Sony mimicked Steam offering two hour refunds, shared libraries, and found some way to allow PSN games to be bought outside of the PSN Store then this might ease the pain of the inevitable transition to digital? I guess you can currently buy PSN credit at a discount, but that’s not really the same.
Matt (he_who_runs_away – PSN ID)

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

PayStation Plus
That was a profoundly resonant speech by Digital Foundry’s John Linemman over the weekend, that I wholeheartedly agreed with.

Your very own assessment of the dire, disillusioning development was wonderfully worded as well, GC – loving the frequency of editorials by you, David Jenkins. Keep it up!

Seriously though, to hell with Sony and their unprecedented, extraordinarily anti-consumer PayStation agenda.
GG

Blatant lies
I feel that Spender needs to retract their statement that Asha Sharma and Phil Spencer probably ‘both got ChatGPT to print off their scripts and give them their opinions.’ They would never do that! They’re Microsoft so they’d use Copilot.

While I’m writing in anyway, I can’t believe these companies are going all in on digital-only considering how much memory games need and how much memory costs right now… because of some these companies’ decisions. I know capitalism isn’t rational, but you’d think they would want to avoid self-immolation.
FoximusPrime

Lucky dip
With regards to the discussion about physical media versus digital media at the moment, one advantage of digital games, that became obvious to me while I was casually browsing the PlayStation Store today, is variety.

There’s so many weird and interesting games on the PSN Store. I expect this wide range of choice is mirrored on the Steam and Xbox stores. OK, a fair amount of these weird and interesting games might not be worth buying and downloading but even a cursory look brought up Hydroneer, which apparently is a game about mining. And then there’s PowerWash Simulator. I’ve already heard of that game, and it looks like it’s got loads of diverse DLC.

I think I can safely give I Am Cat a miss. Or can I? Has anyone played that game? Is it actually a must play if you like cats? Construction Simulator – Spaceport Expansion sounds interesting. I could go on; I’m just relaying my personal highlights from a few pages of the PSN store.

Of course, the old arguments remain in that if/when I buy I Am Cat, without a physical disc in my hand I won’t actually own that game, but if you factor in the huge range of choice available maybe the dominance of digital gaming isn’t so bad after all.
Michael Veal

GC: You also won’t be able to sell it and recoup some of the cost, which would seem the bigger issue when picking games at random from the PlayStation Store’s lower echelons.

Big decisions
All these cuts and layoffs at Xbox and they haven’t done anything but scrub thousands of ordinary workers from their jobs, without making any actual changes. I agree 100% that Todd Howard should go from Bethesda. 17 years, at a minimum, between Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls 6? And the only thing they’ve done in the last decade is the awful Starfield? A disaster and yet he gets to keep his job, despite his salary no doubt being enough to pay for all the people that were laid off.

And why not just rip the Band-Aid off of Game Pass and shut it down? The fact that its subscriber numbers are going down is not a surprise, so what’s the point of it anymore, especially given Call Of Duty isn’t day one anymore and I would bet most other games will follow. Sacking thousands of people is just a Tuesday for Microsoft, beyond that the biggest decision I’ve seen so far from the new boss is trying to get people to write the Xbox name in all caps. She’ll be as useless as Phil Spencer.
Focus

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New reality
With full fibre broadband connections at 300Mbps, 500Mbps, and more the average neighbourhood is ready for the non-physical media world. So the fact that consoles like the PlayStation will become full digital, and discs are to be scrapped, is not that much of a surprise. I have made peace with it in my head. Luckily streaming is more pleasurable and trustworthy, with people’s lives dependent on strong reliable connectivity for leisure and work.

Technology that will not be mainstream yet will be VR headsets, Google glasses, and Apple Vision Pro. Smartphones are way more convenient and reliable, which is why they are the world’s choice. So digital-only will also be the same, as it requires less effort – just managing your devices and PC’s storage.

Which is great but, as GC readers have said and I 100% agree with, unless a library of everything is available, like Kindle books or music streaming and downloading from Spotify and Apple Music etc., then, like a lot of retro games, it’ll be very difficult to access them for the general law abiding gamer.

Hopefully the cloud saving abilities and other innovations can bring all past, current, and future games, films, and TV together to purchase in formats matching Blu-Ray’s exceptional quality, along with libraries that acknowledge the customers who have given their hard-earned money over and to retain their purchases.

Here’s hoping, but to be realistic we just have to accept the majority of companies’ methods and the preferences of the majority of customers.
Alucard

Inbox also-rans
I was going to argue with you that Mario Kart Tour isn’t the worst Mario Kart but… I guess it is. I still kind of like it though.
Roost

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced looks pretty good so I’ll probably try and get once it gets discounted a bit. Just a little bit will do as it’s surprisingly cheap. Not sure why either, because remakes usually aren’t, but I’m not complaining.
Garth

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