One of the hottest industry rumours pre-E3 was that Bethesda would reveal its next game at the show, surprisingly early given it’s only just put the cherry on Skyrim. This clearly didn’t happen, but vice president Pete Hines told OXM that the core team at Bethesda Game Studios led by Skyrim director Todd Howard is indeed working on something, and it is “100% unrelated” to Zenimax Online’s current title, The Elder Scrolls Online.

“Todd Howard, at this point, has earned the right to do what the hell he wants; nobody gets to tell him different and nobody gets to dictate to him what he gets to do. Do you think that even I would go to Todd and say ‘listen, I know you want to do this, but these other guys…?’ He gets to do whatever he wants. Him and his team are moving forward with the stuff that they want to work on and where they want to go next in making games,” Hines said.

“I get to see it and it’s already really awesome, but it’s probably helpful to note that anyone who thinks that what he’s working on next is going to be talked about soon doesn’t understand game development. They just announced that they’re moving the whole team onto something else. Give these guys time and space, expect it never and be surprised if it’s any time before then.”

Hines said that Bethesda doesn’t want to announce the new project yet because it’s not interested in reveals with “no substance”, which would be quite likely so early in development.

Fans are, of course, expecting the new project to be Fallout 4 or The Elder Scrolls VI – but you never know.

Source: OXM

Bethesda have taken to Twitter to tease a new project, posting a bizarre montage of some high-tech looking imagery, presumably snapped from a CGI trailer.

The teasing continues on Gamespot, where another larger image was revealed.

Odds are good that it’s something to do with Machine Games, a studio made up of former Starbreeze members who were acquired by Bethesda in 2010. According to their website, they’ve been working on “an unannounced project for ZeniMax publishing subsidiary, Bethesda Softworks, that is being built on id Software’s revolutionary id Tech® 5 engine technology.”

Stay tuned!

Fresh from announcing they’re done and dusted with Skyrim, Bethesda have posted a short teaser video on the internet hinting at their next project. You can watch it here.

Looks a bit Fallout-ey, doesn’t it? Well it’s not, according to Bethesda bigwig Paul Hines. “Guess again,” was his cryptic response.

Some of the elements spotted in the short video include ‘The Moonbeam Trio’, Bach’s Air on a G String, barbed wire, and of course some sort of blurry record label that looks really, really, Fallout-ey.

Your guesses in the comments section, please. Go!

Source: Quarter to Three

The team behind Skyrim have finally hung up their daedric armour, washing their hands of a development cycle that started way back in 2006. In a farewell post on the Bethesda blog, they thank all the players for their support and mention the need to move on.

“For the last year and a half we’ve been working on new content for Skyrim; from the game updates, Creation Kit, Steam Workshop, Kinect support, to DLCs. Parts of our team have also been in pre-production on our next major project, and that game is at the point where it requires the studio’s full attention to make it our biggest and best work yet.”

“Even though we’re moving on, we’ll still have minor updates to Skyrim as needed. We’ve invested so much of ourselves into Skyrim and will never truly say goodbye to it.”

Could that new project be The Elder Scrolls: Arena? Well, probably not, but we’ll see.

Source: Bethblog

If you’re like me and you have to obsessively own every game soundtrack for every game ever, then I’ve got bad news.

Bethesda have just released the soundtracks for some of their biggest names onto iTunes so you can grab them officially and digitally at the same time.

Releases include The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Also up for grabs are Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Dishonored and RAGE.

Bethesda and ZeniMax are opening a new studio in Austin, Texas. The new developers, Battlecry Studios, will be headed up by Rich Vogel, whose credits include being Star Wars: The Old Republic‘s former executive producer, Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.

The studio, who are the second ZeniMax studio in Austin, alongside Dishonored‘s Arkane studios, are looking for experienced developers to work on an unannounced project.

“I have always admired and respected Bethesda’s approach to making great, original games,” Rich Vogel said. “It’s a belief and passion I share, and I’m looking forward to building a team of high quality developers who want to bring that same commitment and creative energy to the games we’ll be creating.”

Source: VG247

Bethesda are having a huge sale on Steam for the next couple of days. Until the end of the weekend, you can pick up the QuakeCon 2012 pack, a huge collection of id software and Bethesda softworks titles for $134.99, which is a massive 74% off. I think I counted about 26 individual games in there, with all their DLC and expansions including Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind, Fallout and New Vegas, and basically every Quake ever.

If you’re not interested in picking up the whole deal, Bethesda will be having smaller sales on individual games over the weekend as well, starting with all The Elder Scrolls at up to 66% off today (include Skyrim). RAGE will be 50% off tomorrow, followed by all the Fallout titles, then all Quake and DOOM titles on Monday.

There is a further deal available whereby if you preorder Dishonored at the same time as the QuakeCon pack, you will receive even more of a discount (and Arx Fatalis) but unfortunately that deal isn’t available in Australia yet, as Dishonored has not yet been rated.

As an even further side note, showing up on Steam today is the Skyrim DLC Dawnguard, which was mysteriously dropped overnight without a word of warning or announcement – despite saying less than a week ago that they “had no timeline” for the release.

Source: Press Release

This one’s a bit of a rumour, really. According to the same Ukrainian blogger that tipped off the media to the closure of the STALKER 2 project, Bethesda have now picked up the rights to make their own STALKER game. Apparently the brand has not been sold by GSC owner Sergei Grigorovich, but Bethesda have purchased the rights to make a game based on the IP, but do not have the rights to the extended universe. It’s all a bit complicated, which is, of course, exacerbated by the rumour mill and each retelling. It is interesting to note though that when contacted for comment, Bethesda have reportedly responded with a ‘no comment’, as opposed to just a ‘no, this is not true’. So, make of that what you will.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun