New Elder Scrolls "potentially" for 2010

Bethesda has hinted that the next instalment in the tip-top Elder Scrolls series won't be released until 2010.

Speaking to our friends at GamesIndustry.biz, publishing exec Paul Oughton also said there are no current plans to release any Bethesda titles for Nintendo consoles.

"At the moment we've got Fallout 3 for this year and potentially there's a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010," said Oughton. "At the moment we're not that interested in the Wii. We're going to stick to PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

"We'll continue to pursue three or four titles a year and go for big titles," he added. Oughton acknowledged that Nintendo has done a great job of expanding the games market to a mass audience - but said he expects things will soon reach saturation point.

"We've seen game selling in the past 18 months that we never thought we'd see. We wouldn't have thought that pet games and cooking games would have a viable market five years ago. No publisher would have taken those products on," he said.

"But Nintendo bought new products in with vast amounts of marketing money to launch these into the minds of the consumer and made a market for them. Every other publisher then very quickly developed DS and Wii products and we're getting to saturation now."

Never mind all that - 2010, you say? Oh well. At least there's Bethesda's Fallout 3 to be getting on with in the meantime. It's out this Friday for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, and it's well good.