Video game analyst Michael Pachter has been out and about again this week. This time he’s suggesting that The Elder Scrolls 6 won’t be met with the same backlash that Fallout 76 received when it eventually releases–which most certainly won’t be this year regardless of what Pachter says. Fallout 76 was the first foray into multiplayer for the Fallout series and it didn’t go too well, to put it mildly.
But Pachter thinks the reception Fallout 76 garnered was simply a blip for Bethesda and reckons both The Elder Scroll 6 and Starfield will see totally different receptions. Speaking with GamingBolt, Pachter said that Fallout 76 only shows “you that [Bethesda] weren’t ready to make a multiplayer-only game.” Fair enough, it’s the first Fallout game to explore the multiplayer angle, but Bethesda saw a similar (though admittedly less vocal) reception to The Elder Scrolls Online. And Pachter didn’t write Fallout 76 off totally, he says that the developers at Bethesda simply “have to go back and figure out what they did wrong, and how to get it right,” a similar problem they had with TES Online, which now offers a pretty fun and busy MMO to play.
Pachter goes on to say that the online model should be seen more like a blip for Bethesda, explaining that both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield are unlikely to be affected by the poor reception of Fallout 76. Pachter elaborated, saying that “I don’t think there’s any risk to any future single player games.” And if we’re being honest, the claim is probably going to prove to be Pachter’s best prediction of the year.
It certainly isn’t the only prediction that Pachter has claimed for this year, though. Last week Pachter put forward a handful of objectively long-shot predictions for games in 2019, with the analyst suggesting we’ll see The Elder Scrolls 6 release this year, along with a new BioShock game and a new game announcement from Rockstar. And while Pachter is blatantly wrong about the majority of those remarks, how brilliant and strange a year would it be if he was right about every single one?
