Bethesda's Pete Hines Expects Next-Gen Video Games to Cost More

While everyone's talking about Fallout 76 right now, Bethesda is still hard at work with their far-future games like Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield. And through some particular wording by the company's vice president of global marketing and communications, we learn that they know about the next generation of consoles.

VPGMC Pete Hines recently spoke with The Telegraph about their upcoming games, particularly about how curious he is to see how it develops with the new console generation.

"I am curious to see what it looks like and how it's different. I'm privy to some stuff which obviously I can't really talk about, but there is also a lot that I'm not sure on what it's going to look like. And more importantly how big a shift we can expect."

Hines mused on the evolution of graphical quality between the last generation and the one before it (Xbox to Xbox 360). He describes the upgrade as "dramatic," mainly due to the shift toward high-definition. He doesn't believe the transition into the current generation was as big of a deal, as the average consumer was unbothered by the lesser graphics.

He continues by speculating toward higher prices for video games. Hines believes that large-scale games like Starfield will become more expensive to produce, and prices may rise to reflect this.

"Games now are so diverse that to say the cost of all games are going up is a little too broad. To make big triple A games like Starfield is not cheap. It never was. The team sizes are certainly bigger. Hell, back on Morrowind that team was 35 people. That's not even close to the size on Fallout 76. But then you have a game like [The Elder Scrolls Legends] which has a significantly smaller team than a lot of these other things. So it depends on what the game is and the size and the scope of it."

Microsoft has confirmed work on a new console, while PlayStation has previously stated that they aren't planning for a new console until 2021 at the earliest.

Would you pay $80+ for the next Elder Scrolls game?