
At this point, the common meme of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim re-releasing on every gaming platform known to man has transcended new heights. In fact, one of the more memorable moments of Bethesda’s E3 2018 press conference was the Amazon Alexa version of the game which totally exists. However, besides playing to the joke, Bethesda Softworks’ star Executive Producer Todd Howard has his own opinion on when we will see an end to the ports.

Speaking with Geoff Keighly at Gamelab 2018 in Barcelona (and reported by GameIndustry.biz), Howard pointed out that “millions of people every month” are still playing the nearly seven-year-old RPG. And that continued popularity is exactly why we see (seemingly) yearly re-releases of Skyrim. According to Howard, “If you want us to stop releasing it, stop buying it.”

This is far from the first time executives have made these claims about their own series. Most notably, when commenting on the once-annual style of releases for the Assassin’s Creed series, Ubisoft’s then-Vice President of Creative Lionel Raynaud noted:

We are able to offer people a new Assassin’s Creed every year because they want Assassin’s Creed every year… As long as this is true we would be very stupid to not satisfy this need, but it puts a lot of pressure on us to create something that will never disappoint.

Obviously they followed true to their words, with the publisher pulling their most popular series for a year to create a better-crafted Assassin’s Creed: Origins. Not that it is preventing them from returning to a yearly release moving forward…

Regardless, we already know to an extent that the Elder Scrolls series is moving beyond Skyrim. We already have both a mobile-console hybrid game coming in the form of The Elder Scrolls: Blades. Meanwhile, Todd Howard noted that the technology to power The Elder Scrolls VI is getting closer, according to the benchmarks that the developer is looking for.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One; you can grab the most-recent Nintendo Switch port of the game on Amazon if you need to Fus-Ro-Dah on the go with Zelda-themed items.