Bethesda Softworks has apparently refrained from announcing the specific date of release of its fantasy video game "The Elder Scrolls 6" for two reasons: the company's focus on quality, and its refusal to issue dragged-out announcements about its games to its fans.

The e-newsletter crossmap.com quoted sources as indicating the sixth and much-anticipated edition of the award-winning fantasy video game series would likely be released in 2016 at the earliest and 2017 at the latest, while online news provider vinereport.com indicated that it could be released as early as late 2015. Bethesda Softworks, the game publisher, made no mention of the game at the 21st Electronic Entertainment Expo event (E3 2015) held in Los Angeles from June 16 to 18.

The Telegraph quoted Peter Hines, Bethesda Softworks vice president, as saying his company was working hard at ensuring the quality of "The Elder Scrolls 6." He explained that Bethesda preferred to develop and publish to quality rather than scale, so fans should temper their expectations.

"It's rare to have franchises like the ones we have and to have people joking about 'when is Skyrim 2 coming out?'", The Telegraph quoted Hines as saying. "The reason they say that is because generally speaking, that's what you would be getting with another publisher in charge. They'd be spitting out a Skyrim 2 the year after or two years later. That's just how we view it. We're not the sort of publisher that focuses on 'what's our 25 titles for 2015'."

"We do smaller stuff. We don't publish to scale. We publish to quality," Hines said. "We make sure everything we do is noteworthy. Our approach to that hasn't differed. Here and there we might change our approach to how it's presented, but we've still stuck to who we are."

In an earlier interview with German computer game magazine GameStar, which idigitalimes.com quoted, Todd Howard, director of Bethesda Game Studios, developer of The Elder Scrolls series, said he would rather let loose loads of information about a project that is nearing completion than let out bits of information about it over a long period.

"We get asked a lot. I sort of tell people we're figuring things out," Howard was quoted as telling GameStar when interviewed about "Fallout 4." "We're taking our time, we're extremely excited about it and the reason we're kind of holding back right now is because we want to wait until it's really there to show it to everybody."

"We don't want to kind of dribble it out," Howard added. "We'd rather say, you know, 'surprise, boom, here it is' ... I enjoy those moments for other games, so we'd rather hold back and wait and just surprise everybody."

"The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim," immediate predecessor of "The Elder Scrolls 6," came out on November 11, 2011 but the announcement on its release was made 11 months previously, during the Spike Games Awards on December 11, 2010.