Despite being shadow-dropped, the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster is enjoying tremendous success, supposedly selling over 2 million copies and topping 4 million players in its first week. Naturally, many are seeking to hold it up as some sort of lesson for the AAA gaming business, but what exactly that lesson is seems to depend on the person.

Some say it demonstrates untapped interest in single-player games. Others say it’s a testament to how quality and effort trump budget and marketing. I’m not so sure this is what AAA developers and publishers will take away from it, though.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has, over the years, come to be known as one of the all-time classic RPGs. It’s practically become legendary thanks to the nearly two decades of discussion, memes, speedrun videos and people raising it up due to Skyrim fatigue. Combine that with Elder Scrolls 6 still being nowhere in sight and you’ve got a massive audience that’s just dying for anything Elder Scrolls related that’s neither Skyrim or ESO. You could say that it was going to sell massively well no matter what.

There absolutely is something to say for the level of care and quality that its maker, Virtuous, put into it, though. It could have just given it the usual remaster treatment and called it a day. But they instead took a more difficult route, somehow employing Unreal Engine 5 alongside the old Creation Engine to massively pretty up the game and make some key gameplay changes while still maintaining all the jank and charm that Oblivion is known for. AND, they’re only selling it for $50 instead of the $70 – $80 that most other publishers and platform holders (Nintendo and Sony) are pushing for.

It’s a case of delivering exactly what the customer wants while also not breaking the bank or squeezing them for everything they’re worth. And it seems to be paying off. Again, though, this is Oblivion, so I doubt it’s going to change any minds over at the likes of Sony, Ubisoft or Nintendo. The whole “people still want single-player experiences” thing will probably be lost on them too, since such games still, at the end of the day, don’t bring in as a successful mico-transaction heavy game.

However, I think that Oblivion does show that these sorts of games do have the potential to massively undercut their competition for a fraction of the upfront investment. So, while Nintendo, Sony and the like are pushin $70+ new releases, Xbox and smaller publishers can come in and offer similar games with better quality at lower price points. In other words, these sorts of games are still enough of a threat that the greedier companies cannot just do whatever they want.

I think that Nintendo and them will still proceed with their plans, but perhaps they’ll be more careful about release dates and such. And who knows, if Xbox and other mid-tier publishers keep timing their releases well and keep undercutting the competition, perhaps eventually the bigger companies will cave to the threat games like the Oblivion remaster and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 pose and eventually come down themselves lest they lose market share.

Thanks to this, it’s at least clear that there is still competition in the upper-end of the gaming business, meaning that there is still hope for those who still want to see AAA advance in quality without ballooning in price. That’s my hope anyway. Here’s hoping things play out that way.

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What’s your take on the Oblivion remaster situation? Think there’s actually a lesson for AAA companies to learn? Think they’ll actually learn it?

Image from the Steam page