Yes but can't mods do the same for tes v and It's bethesda.

Initial sales are pretty much the really important ones. Bethesda certainly enjoys continued Oblivion sales, but it's unimportant compared to the initial release. And no matter how much the PC version with mods becomes favored as Oblivion ages, it's never going to overtake the console sales.

See, the thing is, it doesn't matter to Bethesda how long you play the game, financially. It only matters that you bought it. So yes, mods increase the game's longevity massively, but Bethesda only sees indirect benefits from that. I highly doubt that it factors heavily in their finances.

Removing modding from TES 5 might create enough bad PR as to hurt sales, but I'd doubt it. If modding hadn't been there to begin with, well, meh. PC sales would be somewhat worse, but not a lot worse, and most of the money's in console sales anyway, so... whatever. Is my guess. Bethesda apparently supports modding primarily because they want to than for financial reasons, which personally, I rather like anyway.

If TES V would not be that good to mod like TES III and TES IV are, i would simply not buy it.
I don`t own an Console because i use mods for every game i play, so i use my PC when want to play. (Hooked up to an 32" LCD-TV, don`t need an Console to do that. :wink_smile: )

There are two ways you can look at this. The standard way is that game companies make all their money on initial sales. For example, Red Dead Redemption is a new sandbox-type console game (old west theme) with no PC version, no mods. The company decided that they would make their money on what they could sell in a year or two. This is probably the standard business model today.

Movies and television used to be made the same way, with no notion of evergreen properties that would be revenue streams for many years into the future. Now, though, every movie and TV production is made with the long-term aftermarket in mind (contracts are viciously negotiated around the aftermarket). Computer technology has changed so fast, that this has never been an issue for console and PC games; games would be made obsolete within a year or two. It is my sense that desktop computing is closing in on being a mature and relatively stable platform. This makes the prospect of evergreen games worth trying to achieve. Because media companies have benefitted hugely from evergreen properties, a person I know in the game business says that a lot of game company executives are starting to take notice.

Modding has made TES4 as close to an evergreen property as you can find among games. Bethesda would be backward-thinking not to include it in TES5.

i hear ya. i played morrowind vanilla right up to oblivion's release date. it wasn't until after a year of playing oblivion vanilla that i discovered the modding community. (up until then, i had been teaching myself how to do 3d models to submit concept art to beth. needless to say, that didn't happen, since i started learning how to mod oblivion)

I'm more worried about the game being more of an action game (closer to Fallout I guess) than the modding thing. It seems like gamesas has been cool enough about mods up to this point. However, the top-selling console games seem to be of the more fast-paced strain. I love my RPGs!

Hah, I have had great pessimism on that point since, oh, April 2006. Shivering Isles was a step in the right direction, though.

That said, I'm not sure how much I can take CRPGs seriously anymore, having gotten into PnP RP games. I mean, no computer is ever going to match an actual human being running the game.

I enjoy well-designed character and story-driven games. Mod's allow me to add new stories to play though in Oblivion, and that is what I enjoy. Before I start playing modified Oblivion I spent most of my time online reading Fanfics, and off-line I spent a lot of time reading books. I read a lot of manga too. I am all about good story lines. I do not want to make a story myself though, honestly. Modified Oblivion is the closest I have been to my ideal game. ...different playing style here, for sure. I am thinking of ideal as Dot Hack Sign...without all the evil putting people into comas part... I would be willing to pay a monthly fee for that sort of game, probably.