Well... not exactly a 'ploy'.

For lack of a better word, 'plan'.

If you want to believe Wikipedia (which I understand lots of people don't) Morrowind had over 4 million sales. Oblivion had over 3 million sales (according to Wikipedia). As for Skyrim (according to Wikipedia), Bethesda says that they shipped over 7 million copies within the first week, and that number later increased to 10 million by mid-December.

So according to that, Morrowind had a good number of sales, but Oblivion never quite made as much sales. Then here comes Skyrim, simplified and easy to grasp ('dumbed down'), and it makes more sales than the other two games ever had within its first week. Not to mention it apparently made more sales than the other two games combined.

We all know Bethesda dumbed Skyrim down a bit to get more players and to open up the RPG genre to a greater number of people. Do you think it worked (obviously)?

With that, I'd feel safe to say TES will return back to the 'complexity' it once had in their older games since it has a bigger and greater following.

PS: I know Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, so if you have a better website to check out then please, by all means, tell me.