The Federal Trade Commission v. Microsoft trial has been a gold mine of leaks this week. Yesterday we learned that Microsoft has set a 2028 release date for the successors to the Xbox Series X and Series S. The latest leaks have revealed a number of unannounced Bethesda games, including Fallout 3 and a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Revealed.

The documents were accidentally released as part of the FTC's ongoing legal battle against Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in July 2020, before Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax was acquired by Microsoft in March 2021 for $7.5 billion. It includes business forecasts compiled by the company. Of course, some of the release windows are out of date given when this chart was prepared. Nevertheless, it provides a clear picture (at least as of three years ago) of Bethesda's planned release schedule through fiscal year 2024.

The full list can be found here. Highlights include:

Some of these schedules have almost certainly shifted. For example, Bethesda's anticipated space-set RPG Starfield is scheduled for release in FY2021, with DLC scheduled for FY2022. However, after suffering several development delays, we only got our hands on "Starfield" earlier this month, and the release date for the DLC expansions remains undecided.

Although it wasn't Bethesda's plan, Starfield's release couldn't have come at a better time, as Xbox's other big exclusive this year, Redfall, has been a disastrous launch, leaving Xbox to remain competitive with the PlayStation 5 It desperately needed Starfield to be a hit in order to stay competitive with the PlayStation 5. In our review of Starfield, we hailed it as "one of the biggest Xbox Series X games of the year, if not this generation."

Even though the document is over three years old at this point, the revelation of upcoming projects like "Oblivion," the "Fallout 3" remaster, and "Dishonored 3" is still a big deal, as neither game had been confirmed as being in production I'm a fan of both. I'm a fan of both and would love to see them brought to the current generation of consoles (or future consoles given Bethesda's history of delays), but the schedule seems a bit short. Especially after Starfield. There is no doubt that Bethesda is betting on the long-term success of something like Skyrim.

The three unnamed projects included in this table may be promising, but the fact that they are still in the early stages of production with titles yet to be determined probably means that we will have to wait a while yet. No doubt some of these games will eventually materialize.