At this point, I can safely assume nobody is surprised by the recent announcement that Zenimax and Bethesda will be delaying Elder Scrolls Online’s console launch. The game was set for a June release on the PS4 and Xbox One, yet we’re already in May and the studios haven’t pointed towards an exact release date yet. It’s unclear how big of a delay this will be, as we still don’t have a release date, but according to a blog on the official Elder Scrolls Online website, it seems we’ll have to wait another 6 months for them to complete tweaking the MMORPG for consoles.
To compensate, Bethesda is offering a unique chance for players waiting for either the PS4 or Xbox One version – those that want to play the game on consoles can pick up the game for the PC right now, begin playing, and later transfer their characters to the console of their choice. This also does not mean that you’ll have to pick up two versions of the same game. The difference in price will be $20 for transferring, but this will include another 30 day subscription period, so in reality, you can pick up the game now on the PC and play it later on on consoles, with the same characters, for basically $5. That’s not a bad deal.
Regardless, the delay causes some measure of concern. It seems the studio is having difficulties in optimizing ESO for console play, and the greatest challenge seems to be the rework of the control system. MMORPGs in general require a large number of key-bindings for optimal play, and solving this issue on consoles is not an easy task. Avoiding shaky launches for MMORPGs is never a bad thing, and despite the delay in Elder Scrolls Online’s release date, we feel it’s better to have a good product later than a bad one sooner.
“Integrating our systems with each console manufacturer’s networks—which are both different from the PC/Mac system as well as different from each other—has been a challenging process. It has become clear that our planned June release of the console versions isn’t going to be possible. Though we have made great progress, we have concluded that we’ll need about six months to ensure we deliver the experience our fans expect and deserve.” said Bethesda. You can read the full blog post on Elder Scrolls Online’s official website.
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