Todd Howard says Bethesda Game Studios is building The Elder Scrolls VI and Fallout 5 on Creation Engine 3, but the studio’s attention is split very unevenly for now. Fallout 5 is still in preproduction, while The Elder Scrolls VI has become the team’s primary focus.
Howard made the update on Friday, days after sweeping layoffs hit Xbox and other Xbox-owned studios earlier this month, giving players a fresh read on where Bethesda is putting its biggest effort. The timing matters because the studio is not talking about a distant wish list anymore; it is spelling out which franchise gets the majority of the work now and which one is still waiting its turn.
The numbers behind the update are telling. Bethesda said the majority of its team is working on The Elder Scrolls VI, while Fallout 5 remains a long-range destination rather than a game with a near-term release window. Howard said the studio is still developing future games on Creation Engine 3, a shared technology platform it has been building since Starfield launched, and that both series sit inside that same pipeline.
That leaves readers with the part Bethesda did not solve. The studio confirmed that Fallout 5 is in the works and that it has multiple Fallout projects active right now, including a new one in partnership with Obsidian Entertainment, but it did not give a date for when Fallout 5 will leave preproduction. It also did not say when The Elder Scrolls VI will ship. For now, the message is simple: one game is being actively built, the other is still being assembled behind it.
Howard also tried to make clear that Fallout is not being left behind. He said Fallout 5 remains a long-range destination and that Starfield still matters to Bethesda Game Studios’ future, with new stories, gameplay improvements, additional updates and new Starborn content planned for next year. That means the studio is juggling the next chapters of three major projects at once, but only one of them is getting the bulk of the team today. Fans waiting for a release date for Fallout 5 or The Elder Scrolls VI did not get one; they got a map of priorities instead.
