Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says she watched an Elder Scrolls 6 playthrough this week, and came away impressed by what she saw. “Live playthrough of The Elder Scrolls VI: ******** this morning,” Sharma wrote in a tweet. She used eight asterisks to stand in for the game’s still-unannounced subtitle. “The scale and grandeur are incredible. The story is even greater,” she added.
Sharma did not say where the playthrough took place or who ran it. It was most likely a milestone presentation shown to her and other Xbox executives by the development team at Bethesda Game Studios. Studio director Todd Howard was possibly in the room too. Neither the setting nor how far along the demoed build is has been confirmed. Sharma offered no further detail in the days after the tweet.
Sharma’s Elder Scrolls 6 playthrough follows months of teasing
The tweet extends a run of small updates about a game that has been in development for close to a decade. Bethesda first revealed The Elder Scrolls 6 with a brief teaser at E3 in June 2018, and has released only scattered updates since. In June, Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty told fans the project was “coming along well,” roughly eight years after that initial reveal. He described the pressure of wanting to show off progress early while also waiting for the right moment to reveal more.
“I can tell you, having visited Bethesda and sat with Todd and seen Elder Scrolls playing, it looks amazing, and it’s coming along well,” Booty said at the time. “We’ll make sure to announce it and really reveal it at the right time.” Sharma’s comments this week echo that same mix of confidence and restraint.
Bethesda calls the game its top priority
Last month, Bethesda outlined its plans for the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises. The announcement came shortly after layoffs hit the studio as part of wider cuts across Xbox. Bethesda named The Elder Scrolls 6 as its development priority, with several other projects, including the pre-production Fallout 5, built around it.
The layoffs drew criticism from Bethesda’s Montreal studio. Affected developers said through their union that they would receive the smallest severance allowed by law and lose health insurance benefits immediately. That fallout shadowed what was otherwise framed as a wave of good news for fans of the studio’s two biggest franchises.
Both games run on Creation Engine 3, which Bethesda describes as technology, tools, and systems meant to power its next generation of role-playing games. The studio has not set a release window for The Elder Scrolls 6, and Sharma’s tweet does not change that. Booty’s June comments suggest the studio would rather wait until the game is ready to show properly than announce a date early. Until Bethesda changes that approach, comments like Sharma’s remain the clearest signal fans have that work is progressing behind closed doors.
- Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says she watched The Elder Scrolls 6 played live, describing its scale as “incredible.”
- Xbox CCO Matt Booty said in June that the game is “coming along well” after visiting Bethesda.
- Bethesda named The Elder Scrolls 6 its development priority following recent layoffs.
- The game runs on Creation Engine 3, shared with the pre-production Fallout 5.