Set to come out next year, Elder Scrolls Online is one of the most anticipated upcoming MMO titles. Besides perhaps Bungie’s Destiny, this new direction for the Elder Scrolls series has garnered some of the biggest interest for an online focused title for next generation consoles. As such what is surprising is the fact there were originally no plans for a release on either the Xbox One or Playstation 4.

In a recent interview with GameInformer Adam Boyles, Vice-President of Developer and Publisher Relations at Sony, spoke at length about the company’s “push to work with the best independent and big-studio developers around.” The specific subject he spoke of was Betheda’s initial reluctance to release their new title on consoles:

“Bethesda… cooking up the whole The Elder Scrolls Online deal – that game was never planned to come to consoles and we just kind of kept sitting with them and being like, ‘Why not? PS4s…’

As we’re sort of disclosing the team and telling them more about the details, I’m like, ‘There’s no reason – I love MMOs and I love The Elder Scrolls.’ So I was like, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ They’re like, ‘We’re not planning it.’ I’m like, ‘Well, what if we built a plan that we could do that?’

Getting that, knowing that a game’s coming to console that was never going to come to consoles, that’s the kind of stuff that is like, “yes!” you know, hugely awesome.”

While it remains to be seen if the game will be a success, the amount of interest behind the name and established fanbase gives the title some real weight behind it. As such it makes sense for Sony to have pushed for such a release to be bought out on console, but the most surprising part is the lack of interest in Bethesda’s part. While always having the majority of their community based around PC releases, Oblivion and Skyrim none the less garnered considerable success on consoles. Statistic Brain estimated that a total of 59% of users who purchased boxed releases played Skyrim on the Xbox, with another 29% playing on PS3, leaving only 14% of owners playing on PC. Even accounting for the considerably higher number of sales on Steam, console users still make up a large part of their customer base.

As of yet there has been no response to this from either Bethesda or developer ZeniMax Online Studios to these statements from Boyle.

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