Elder Scrolls 6 release date delayed? What Indiana Jones means for Bethesda

Bethesda has a lot of work to do. The studio announced that it’s developing an Indiana Jones game under the Lucasfilm Games banner, adding another project to their growing slate of games.

While that’s exciting news, it certainly raises some questions for fans. Bethesda diehards are currently waiting with bated breath to hear any new details on games like The Elder Scrolls VI. No new details about the game have been revealed since it was announced with a vague logo in 2018. With a major new project on the table, fans are worried that the Indiana Jones project could split the studio’s time.

The main point of concern here is Todd Howard, who’s serving as executive producer on the game. Howard is most well known for directing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and he’s heavily involved with the upcoming sequel. An Elder Scrolls fan’s worst fear is that Howard would need to take a step back to work on a project with as much money on the table as Indiana Jones.

Before creating doomsday scenarios, it’s important to understand Howard’s actual role. The gaming icon is no stranger to executive producing content at Bethesda; In fact, he’s constantly working on several projects at once. Bethesda SVP of Global Marketing Pete Hines pointed out how much work Howard actually does at the company in a tweet.

“Todd is currently EP on many BGS and other projects, such as the Fallout TV show. His main focus remains Directing the upcoming Starfield and TES6 games, which aren't affected by today's news,” Hines tweeted.

Executive producers have a very different role than game directors or even normal producers. An executive producer is more of a high-level management role that’s there to make sure games stay on schedule. Generally, executive producers aren’t so much in the weeds making decisions about a game. That’s different from a normal game producer, who works much more closely on one project.

With that in mind, it’s unlikely that Howard is making many creative decisions when it comes to Indiana Jones judging by Hines’ tweet. Direction for the game will more come from Wolfenstein developer MachineGames, which is handling the project.

While that answers one question, there’s still another one lingering: What does Microsoft’s recent Bethesda acquisition mean for the Indiana Jones game? With that deal in place, it seems that the new game could be console exclusive for Xbox. Bethesda’s library will come to Game Pass as part of the deal, so we can assume the game will land there when it launches.

But hope isn’t entirely dead for PlayStation owners. For now, Microsoft is still being flexible with Bethesda exclusivity. The company says it’ll honor Sony’s current exclusive deals for Ghostwire: Tokyo and Deathloop, offering hope that Bethesda games will continue to release on other consoles. Xbox chief Phil Spencer noted in an interview with Kotaku that the acquisition deal wasn’t designed to snatch up exclusive games, but he’s been somewhat vague about Microsoft’s plans.

“When I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means,” Spencer told Kotaku.

For now, the Indiana Jones game doesn’t look like it’ll change any of Bethesda’s plans, so fans can rest easy. However, it’s always a little tricky to parse marketing speak, so we won’t know for sure until Bethesda actually starts releasing details about some of its most anticipated titles.

A video game based on Indiana Jones is currently in development.