Elder Scrolls Online, Developer Bethesda and Publisher ZeniMax’s MMO treatment to the popular RPG series that has spanned generations, has never had a promising future. Originally releasing back in July of this year, it was critically panned for lackluster content and being an overall poor game wrapped behind both a $60 price point as well as a monthly fee. ZeniMax has promised gamers that The Elder Scrolls Online would reach its console counterparts on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later this year, promising a “holiday 2014” release date.
This promise is no more. Well known hacker and sleuth, superMTW, has shared with LevelSave his insider scoop on the matter. MTW, who was partner to world-reknowned hacker and Xbox One legend superDAE, has shared with us that while the game “could be shipped,” it will not be. MTW tells us that Bethesda does not want to “poison the well … that the product isn’t very good at the moment, and they don’t want to destroy the image and the minds of the console audience and possibly hurt a future mainline Elder Scrolls release. (these are MTW’s words, paraphrasing what his source told him, not Bethesda’s wording)
The oddest part of this news is the fact that the game is “in a very functional, playable state,” it’s just “being restructured, with plans to be relaunched at some point as free to play with a big content update.” It appears this reason comes not only from the fact that the game is, for lack of better words, bad, but also that the infrastructure to support monthly subscription based access isn’t properly supported. While Microsoft recently added the capabilities with Electronic Arts’ “EA Access” service, Sony’s PlayStation 4 has no form of support for subscription based monthly access.
MTW tells us that there isn’t even a staff working on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Elder Scrolls Online. While big updates to the PC version will be patched in to the “completely playable” console versions, that’s all that’s done. This news comes two months after Bethesda laid off a large portion of their staff back in September, with reasoning being that they were scaling back development now that the game was six months in to the wild.
We’ve reached out to ZeniMax and Bethesda for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
You can find SuperMTW on Twitter, @enMTW.
Well, look who was wrong.
If the PS4 doesn’t have any set-up for subscription based games, then how do Square manage to do it perfectly well with FFXIV:ARR?
Is ANYTHING in this article true? You couldn’t even get the release date right. It was released in April.
And yeah, it’s actually pretty awesome, too.
Let me drop some knowledge real quick. The PC and Mac versions did of course release April 4th 2014 and the Next gen editions were slated for a Late June early July 2014 release. But now it is pushed to 2015 (there were rumors of cancelling it).
/schooling
Knowledge, dun dropped.
Lol somehow stumbled on this article and couldn’t help but laugh at the comments. Should have been a good hint when the writer couldn’t even get the publisher and developer right.
Lol u noobs kill me
LoL. its still better than most MMO
Just cancel it. No one wants it or needs it. Get it over with. As much as I’d like to see it really fail on its own with its bullshit subscription model, just cancel it.
The PC version just solidified how terrible this was always going to turn out.
https://twitter.com/TESOnline/status/532001432611094529
Confirmed false :)
Sounds like PR damage control. Still no way this crap ever gets released.
Well…it just did.
I don’t really believe a random person just because they said it, but I hope the guy is telling the truth. I could see ESO being a very good F2P experience if they set it up like Rift
Gee, ya think?? LOL…
Sweet source bro
and you read it here first
Good, just scrap that game, forget it happened