ESO Coming to Next-Gen, Console Crossplay Not Included
During a recent interview, Elder Scrolls Online creative director Rich Lambert confirmed that ESO is coming to next-gen consoles. The game has already gotten performance upgrades and has drastically improved over time as it is, but ZeniMax Online Studios is working on a next-gen client as well. The team also has decided not to implement crossplay into Elder Scrolls Online due to decisions they made in the initial development of the MMORPG. Elder Scrolls Online is currently available for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Google Stadia, Mac, on top of the upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
“What we’ve kind of announced up to this point is we are going to do a next-gen client,” said Rich Lambert. “We’re not quite ready to talk about it yet, but at the launch of the consoles, you’ll be able to play Elder Scrolls Online in compat mode.” The rendering engine upgrade to Elder Scrolls Online happened a couple of updates ago now, and the team is still looking to improve the current-gen version of ESO as well as the new client for next-gen.
When talking about Crossplay, Rich Lambert said “it is not an easy problem to solve. You know, we made some decisions 13 years ago now- 2007 when we started building the game- that aren’t easily, you know, changeable at this point. And then also the game has been live for six years now. And each of the mega servers has its own unique community and more importantly, own unique economies. And so trying to merge all of those kind of into one thing is a huge challenge. So right now, it’s kind of not in the cards for us.” So it looks like even with the release of next-gen consoles, crossplay won’t be added to ESO.
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