How 'bout fixing the lack of 7.1 (side speakers) surround sound support before dropping support for Skyrim? This is likely a programming logic issue where the game doesn't properly detect number of speakers over 6 or doesn't properly set the output matrix for the speakers, not an audio production issue. I'm pretty sure that Skyrim uses XAudio2 so it should be perfectly capable of doing 7.1; the only audio API that I know of that doesn't support 7.1 is Wwise which is unfortunately used for many big titles now days.

Notable "Bethesda" games that use XAudio2 and have proper 7.1 support are DOOM 3 BFG Edition and RAGE. It's possible through the API and you guys have the resources to correct the issue.

To be fair, DOOM and RAGE are not made by Bethesda.