Xbox announced that studios under the auspices of Bethesda / ZeniMax will in the future follow the strategy that Blizzard Entertainment is already implementing.
It seems that Starfield will not become a series. We last saw it from the Dishonored series, at least under Xbox. Rage is crossed, just like The Evil Within and Prey.
The result is that new business direction which the leadership of Xbox ordered to the studios under the umbrella of the former ZeniMax. Bethesda, id Software and MachineGames will focus exclusively on their most popular series in the future, namely
- Fallout
- The Elder Scrolls
- Doom
- Wolfenstein
- Quake
I don’t know how Quake became popular, but this is practically a confirmation that a new game from that series is in development. Quake 4 was released more than 20 years ago. Wolfenstein also managed to “survive”, which we can take as confirmation of the rumors that the third part of that series is in development, along with the planned TV series.
The strategy for Bethesda’s teams now becomes the same as for Blizzard, which also announced that it does not plan to create new franchises, but will focus on the existing ones (Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft).
Under Microsoft, Bethesda released quite a number of original games from 2021, such as the already mentioned Starfield, then Deathloop, Redfall, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Hi-Fi Rush and others. However, none of them delivered commercial success or took off as a popular new Xbox franchise. They just boasted about Starfield from Bethesda as being among the most played titles on the Game Pass subscription, but they never revealed the game’s sales figures.