Wondering what people think about this. It just seems like there is a drought of good games at the moment/this generation. The examples I've seen that are important to me are the next TES and red dead.

Morrowind Oblivion Skyrim TES 6 GTA 4 Red Dead GTA V Red Dead 3

First Trailer 2001 2005 2010 2016/7? 2007 2009 2011 2016?

Release year 2002 2006 2011 2017/8? 2008 2010 2013 2017?

Time between 4yrs 5yrs 6/7yrs? 2yrs 3yrs 4+yrs?

There would seem to be an ever increasing amount of time between each series, making the media silence that games often have evn more unbearable. What are your thoughts on this.

nb The dates were all from the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure they're all right.

I think with more and more advanced technology it has the side effect of having devs take longer on a project. Yeah I'm not hopeful TES6 will be announced this year, or even a trailer.

You're not taking the Fallout games into account. Bethesda developed Fallout 3 between Oblivion and Skyrim and they developed Fallout 4 between Skyrim and (presumably) TES VI. So, if anything, the time between Bethesda's releases is, on average, slightly shorter these days.

This.

Morrownd: 2002

Oblivion: 2006

Fallout 3: 2008

Skyrim: 2011

Fallout 4: 2015

So, there's an average of... hang on... 2.6 years between gamesas title releases. Because they have a small development team (and working on something that is signficantly more complex than your average FPS or Football Simulator), they can't split their team to work on both titles consecutively, or release them every two years. Expectations for TESVI will be around 2018-2019 at the latest, 2017 if we're lucky.

Looks to me like you just need to try new games. You've only got three franchises up there. There are plenty of awesome games that have come out in the past two years alone, like Bloodborne, Witcher 3, and the Phantom Pain.

Oblivion took the shortest amount of years with 4. Oblivion to Skyrim was 5. Skyrim to TES6, going by what Marss said is..8 years >_>, but currently it's 5. Fallout 3 to Fallout 4 took 7 years.

Played the witcher 3 and completed literally everything. Played Bloodborne. Didn't like it at all. Found it too repetitive. Not a fan of Metal Gear if I'm being honest also. Gameplay and storywise.

I didn't really take it into account on purpose.

Even with Fallout.

2002-2006-2008-2011-2015 There would still appear to be an increase not including MW. 2yrs 3yrs 4yrs etc. It's probably because I massively prefer TES to Fallout.

The last fallout came out 5 years before this one. It is now 5 years since the last elder scrolls and at this rate it could be the longest period without a TES game. Possibly 6-7-8? years if it's announced this year. That feels too long to wait for an elder scrolls game imo.

I guess it's just this generation of games.

Last gen got 2 GTAs, Red Dead and a Max Payne from R*. Already nearly 3 years into this cycle all we've had is a replica of an old GTA.

Last gen had 2 elder scrolls and 2 fallouts. This one will be lucky to see 3 games from bethesda at this rate.

Last gen had 3 borderlands games. BIA also last came out in 2008, already 8 years.

Part is also series getting scrapped. IE There were 3 medal of honors last gen. There will be none this gen because of EA's stupidity in pushing overused modern/futuristic warfare.

etc

We're already well into this gen and the decent games that have been put out are few and far between. Last gen I was always looking forward to a new release. Probably because of a golden gaming period between 2006-2010 possibly 11. So many great games in that period. At the moment i don't even know if half the games I would like to see exist. And if they wll exist it's another 2/3 years away.

Honestly what good games have come out for this gen so far?

Witcher 3... Fallout 4 is good. Then I'm struggling.

2015 from 2008 is not 5 years...

I would much rather them take their time. Yeah, I get annoyed at the bugs but for all the content and open world gameplay I can see why it takes a while.


Far cry and Just Cause take a while to come out too.



And look at the Madden Football and Assassin Creed games. Those are like an assembly line with minor tweaks added in between games. I would hate for my Bethesda games to be like that.



I think Bethesda knows what they are doing. They haven't disappointed me since Daggerfall so if they take a long time between games I'm happy with it.

Well we only had 3 titles from BGS last gen. FONV was an Obsidian title (and a rushed one).


Metal Gear Solid, though not their best work, still a great title. Far Cry 4 got really great reviews. And the indie titles out there have been some of the strongest ever. Case and point: Rocket League.


But you're not wrong about your concern. Development cycles are increasing. It's mostly the graphics and environments. The more detailed and larger they get, the longer it takes. And what makes it worse is that even though the graphics get exponentially stronger in the stats, to the eye their growth is getting slower and slower.



One final note: GTA V is truly a cross gen game. It started on 7th gen, got a full remastering and carried over to 8th....and now the game on the 7th gen cant be pushed any farther, and 8th gen version continues to grow. So really, both gens got a GTA game made specifically for their system in the past 2 years.

Yeah. But last gen was slow too. R* consist of several studios, for example, Rockstar San Diego only made a single game last gen, Red Dead Redemption. And Rockstar Vancouver pretty much just made Max Payne 3 and was then shut down in 2012, so we won't see more games from them.

And then there's the enormous Rockstar North responsible for the GTA games, but they also have almost 400 employees (4 times more than Bethesda Game Studios).

I've said it before but I'd rather have an absolutely jam packed game with no cut content every 10 years, than a game with decent content and some cut content every 5 years.

This right here. Besides, all that time between allows you to see what other games are out there

I don't mind waiting. There are plenty of options for diversion in between time.

True, but it doesn't matter to those of us who are interested only in one franchise. Well, TES specifically. With 10 years between FO2 and FO3, Fallout fans are used to waiting.

I am puzzled. What do you mean there are no good games inbetween? There are a lot of good games. You have missed the Witcher series. Well I missed Witcher and bought Witcher 2 but never played it (time restricitions at the time) and now we have Witcher 3. There are other great games as well. What is this drought you are talking about? You listed what 2 companies? 2 companies don't make a drought, you are just limiting your choice selection.

Also you forgot Arena and Daggerfall and Battlespire.

Yeah I know it was obsidian, but it filled a gap. Rocket league is an ok game. Nothing really special, except being a copy of Top Gear.

Far Cry 4 was ok, but was a carbon copy of Far Cry 3. Literally just a new skin. I still prefer Far Cry 2 to 3 and 4. But yeah, you're right about the reasons for it taking longer. I imagine cost is a big factor hence R* milking GTA.

If that were true it'd be ok, but it seems we spend longer waiting for the same or even less content.

Yeah their offices in Edinburgh do have a lot of employees (I know one of them) but somehow they haven't produced much recently. Still no singleplayer dlc and GTA V on current gens was a transfer from old gen rather than made from the ground up.

I already stated I played Witcher. Apart from that though...

I listed more companies too. Ie Borderlands, BIA, Medal of Honor, Mafia etc. And yeag I left out early TES games on purpose.

Such as???

The "no good games", not gonna bother explaining why I agree with that(no one is going to get it), but I know how he feels.

How about that, I didn't have to be the one to say this.

Rocket League isn't special? Pretty much every major gaming media outlet and awards named it top indie game of 2015 (or at least was a finalist), is a huge success story and faaaaar exceeded expectations of popularity (see the story about Dave's Bread from Psynonix). And how is it a carbon copy of....Top Gear? Not sure what you're even referring to. A game from 1992 for the SNES that has nothing to do with this game? If anything, it's an updated version to it's predecessor: SARPBC.


And secondly, it just sounds to me that you're very narrow on what games you want to play and just overly skeptical. Let me ask you this: do you have any ideas for possible solutions for games to be built faster without skyrocketing the production cost?

I prefer waiting. Bethesda is one of those developers that cares about their games quite a bit and put a lot of time and effort into them. Especially into the world itself. (You can complain about Bethesda's stories or minor choices all you want. But I think we can all agree that Bethesda is completely amazing at creating an open world to explore with many small "stories" told just by sight and content to uncover; and that's what Bethesda enjoys doing the most, it seems).

I don't know - I need developers to take their time between releases so I can catch up on my massive backlog!


It's been a great couple years for me. What with X-Com 2 out, and I still need to finish Fallout 4, then Blood Bowl 2 and Darkest Dungeon. Then I need to catch up on all the great stuff from last year...

In no particular order: reading, catching up with or discovering new tv shows, movies, getting into new music, going out with friends, playing other video games, finding a non video game related hobby, or working out. There are options, you just have to find something you enjoy doing!

What happened when we complain that there is a Call of Duty game every year, or Assassins Creed every year? (I think 2016 will be the first time an AC game is not released yearly)

We can't have it both ways, you either take your time or you release year after year. I am so glad how Bethesda have done it. If they did a yearly or every 2 year cycle, I think a lot of us would be burnt out from them. After all the are still using the same game engine for what 10 years or more now? If Bethesda did every 2 year game cycle, I am sure not a lot of us would be playing Fallout 4 because we would be sick of it.

There's plenty of 'good games', the problem is that you're such a phrase as a lazy synonym for 'big games', ones developed by massive teams with exorbitant budgets.

If you just care about the latest blockbuster you can still play: Infamous: Second Son, Alien: Isolation, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Batman: Arkham Knight, Far Cry 4, Dying Light etc.There's also a profusion of great indie/small budget games, such as Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Life Is Strange, Firwatch, Until Dawn, and many more.

If you're not prepared to look for great games don't expect to find any.

I'll agree that there hasn't been as much of an overall exponential increase of content between TES games as I'd personally like (hence my opinion that they need to drastically increase the scale of many things, like factions, depth of factions, overall size, interesting perks, less cutting and more overhauling, better roleplay avenues, more meaningful creature and dungeon differences, etc.). But I think the method for optimal improvement is more development time and not less.