Bethesda to Host E3 Conference This Year
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This year, Bethesda Softworks will host its own conference at E3, despite traditionally shying away from the venue for big announcements. The announcement comes directly from the publisher's website: the conference will be held in Hollywood on June 14th. Some seats have apparently been reserved for the public, though details on how to register will be disclosed at a later date.
An E3 conference from Bethesda Softworks is unprecedented, so there are good reasons to believe the company might want to make some big announcements. Most people are speculating, and with good reason, that this might be the time to unveil the next big project from Todd Howard's team, which entered full production almost two years ago after the developer stopped supporting Skyrim. It's very, very likely that this project will be a new open-world Fallout game that follows the same trajectory of the titles Howard and his team have previously worked on. A new The Elder Scrolls game or even a new IP are not completely out of the realm of possibilities, but it would be very bizarre for Bethesda to leave the Fallout franchise dormant for much longer, given Fallout: New Vegas released almost 5 years ago. Either way, it will be interesting to see how Bethesda reveals the title and what kind of features it will include. The industry is currently enamored with the open-world design paradigm, so Bethesda's traditional focus on scope might not appear as impressive. Their formula, however, is still largely unique to their titles, and resonated extremely well with the larger public, as proven by Skyrim's exceptionally fast and impressive sales .
A new project from Arkane Studios seems also fairly likely given the studio hasn't announced anything since the release of Dishonored's DLC. VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines claimed Dishonored would become one of Bethesda's franchises all the way back in 2012, so it's not difficult to believe a sequel might be in the works. It's also very likely that The Elder Scrolls Online will be shown in some capacity, since the conference will be hosted just a few days after the release of the game's console versions.
Ultimately, though, without any pre-announcement or leak the only ways to know for sure what titles will be shown will be to follow the conference, which will be streamed on Bethesda's Twitch channel, or wait for the post-conference press coverage. As usual, we will attempt to provide coverage on relevant titles as quickly and comprehensively as possible.
