We know, the release of Starfield was a major event at Bethesda last year. Indeed, the company had not released a new franchise for 25 years, which shows that it is an important game. The historic creator, Todd Howard, has also confirmed the importance of the new license for the publisher.
Starfield is officially a new franchise from Bethesda
It was during an interview with MrMattyPlays that Todd Howard, famous game designer at Bethesda, clarified his vision of Starfield as a franchise alongside the company’s historic juggernauts, Fallout and The Elder. Srolls.
We are now very busy making sure that each of these franchises gets special attention.
We now have three big franchises. Starfield has 14 million players with an average playtime that’s still over 40 hours per player, that’s just a staggering amount of time in the game.
And so taking care of each of these franchises and all of these players that we’ve been talking about, we have our hands full right now and we’re just hoping to do the best we can across the studio for all of this and we understand that people are going to having to wait sometimes until we release some of these great games and we just hope that it’s worth the wait and that everyone will love the games as much as we loved making them.
Creating new intellectual property is always risky, as evidenced by the numerous sequels, remakes and remasters within the video game industry. With considerable development time, Starfield was therefore a gamble and it is interesting to note that the game therefore officially joins Fallout and The Elder Srolls as a franchise that matters to Bethesda.
Starfield 2? Bethesda has work for decades
When we talk about a franchise, it’s not just a game released on a given date. This is an entire universe created to tell stories over the long term. There have already been nine Fallout games released so far, and four big The Elder Scrolls + The Elder Scrolls Online games. And it’s impossible to forget the Fallout TV series, already one of the big successes of 2024 and which will not fail to give ideas for other games later.
If Starfield follows the same path, it is already assured that a second game will see the light of day, and certainly others afterward. We also know that The Elder Srolls Online teams are working on something else, why not a massively multiplayer Starfield Online where players would meet online in the four corners of space?
In the meantime, Bethesda already has a lot to do and is unlikely to get bored. The Elder Scrolls VI is officially in development, as is Fallout 5 which is expected to be released next. A busy schedule, even if Todd Howard refuses to talk about dates for these two future games.
