New release for Oblivion

[Holst]

Earlier this year I reinstalled the game and because I wanted a totaly different experience, I downloaded quite some mods. It took me three months of my freetime after work and between household duties to choose all the mods I wanted, download them and in the end get them all to work without conflicting with eachother. In the end I had a totaly different game and from my point of view a nearly endless well of pleasure. Now it crossed my mind, why doesn't Bethesda do this? It has been five years since the release of Oblivion, why don't they start working on a new release for the game including the top mods of the last five years. Normaly they could do a better job than I can, and of cours the modmakers would have to agree that their work is used in a commercial product, and yes there are some hard choices to be made; but in the end I would have gladly spent 50 euros on a copy of a totaly modded oblivion that ran stable and just needed to be installed. Or is this just lazyness?

Off course the same thing could be done for Morrowind.

(Sorry for my Englisch, no native speaker.)

[Balakirev]

In the end I had a totaly different game and from my point of view a nearly endless well of pleasure.

 

I completely agree. Between mods that fix problems in Oblivion and others that expand its potential, modded Oblivion has it all over vanilla Oblivion.

 

Now it crossed my mind, why doesn't Bethesda do this? It has been five years since the release of Oblivion, why don't they start working on a new release for the game including the top mods of the last five years.

 

This was almost verbatim asked about Morrowind, after Oblivion came out. People answered, not unreasonably, that all the sales lay with the new game, and that all Bethsoft's resources were naturally going to be spent there, too. As for mods, Bethsoft technically could claim ownership of them, but would get into a real PR minefield if they tried to do so. And paying for modders' efforts...? That's something they would never do. They've never acknowledged up front the work modders achieve except to use popular mod ideas in successive games, like user houses, or store and home hours with locked doors, modded into Morrowind, part of the base package in Oblivion.

 

...All of which is to say that I can't see Bethsoft spending money on a 5-year-old game, when they could put it instead in a new one. For them, as for anybody in the Gaming Industry, it's all about the bottom line, where the biggest return lies.

 

Nice idea, though. And frankly, I'd wish they'd do this to Morrowind. ;)