Though many publishers have dipped into the mobile and social gaming markets, Bethesda vice president of PR and marketing Pete Hines recently stated that the company will continue to focus on console and PC games.
“We don’t have Facebook stuff. We don’t have mobile stuff. We feel like we really know who we are and we know what we’re good at,” Hines explained in an interview with Eurogamer. “A while ago it was social games that were all the rage and [people were asking] ‘why aren’t we doing Facebook?’. That’s not what we do, and now that’s no longer a big deal. So we didn’t run after it and now we’re not running away from it. We’re just going to kind of stick to what we feel is best.”
Hines also noted that Bethesda is not currently looking at Nintendo’s Wii U as a publishing platform. “We have nothing announced in development for Wii U,” he said. “It’s not something that we’ve done anything for previously. I don’t even remember the last time we’ve done a Nintendo title. We don’t have anything now. Whether or not we would in the future is TBD. As for why, I guess I’d rather not go into that.”
Hines stresses that the company remains on the lookout for opportunities in emerging markets, however. “That’s not to say that we wouldn’t do an iPhone game or an XBLA thing,” he said. “And that’s not to say we’re not branching out. We started a new studio out in Austin led by Rich Vogel called Battlecry, which is working on a free-to-play title, so we’re clearly not ‘oh, it only needs to be premium priced triple-A stuff on a disc’. We have other stuff in the works.”
