The Fallout 4 release date was a bit of an odd bird. Bethesda only announced the game at E3 2015, and then, that November, it came out. That’s an unprecedentedly short release window for a triple-A game these days, but according to Bethesda bossman Todd Howard, speaking at the DICE 2016 Summit (via Gamespot ), it may become the company’s new model. Bethesda has three big projects in the works, according to Gamespot, and we won’t hear about them for a long time. Because Bethesda loves that short release window. So much for any hope of Elder Scrolls 6 news this decade!

Elder Scrolls 5, Fallout 4, Short Release Windows And You

As he said at DICE, Howard— who we interviewed last fall—really likes the short release windows, and mostly for the reasons you’d expect. The company chose to delay announcing Fallout 4 for years— even though everybody knew about it —to maximize the window of excitement between the game’s announcement and release. After all, Fallout 4 didn’t need to build awareness and hype. It just needed to ride that immense level of excitement straight to the polls (the sales polls). And obviously it worked. Fallout 4 shipped 12 million copies for its first day.

So it worked, and Bethesda likes the model. And why wouldn’t they? Nintendo is a good counterexample as it has fallen into the trap of announcing games too early before (say, Zelda Wii U). Everybody gets all excited and asks Nintendo a bunch of questions the company won’t answer because things might change. The game disappears for a year and gets delayed. Compared to that Bethesda’s model looks pretty robust. To be fair to Nintendo, it announces games early for a reason—it has systems to sell, and future games can entice customers to buy them. This is obviously not an issue for Bethesda.

Howard even teased that release windows shorter than six months are possible. How short? Who knows. The company’s Fallout 4 announcement was a bit of an experiment, and it was a resounding success. The company is pretty well incentivized to maximize hype. And for properties that everybody knows at this point, a short marketing campaign seems to be working pretty well.

What does that mean for the Elder Scrolls 6 release date , assuming Bethesda is working on the game? It means it’s going to be a long wait before we even hear news about it. Rumors may leak out sooner, but whatever those three big projects of Bethesda’s are, they’ll stay mum for now—and for a long time to come. At least the Fallout 4 DLC is coming up a little sooner!