What’s particularly interesting is that this job listing is clearly asking for Future Generation Console Programmer who will slot into Bethesda Game Studios’ programming department. The job’s requirements also give us a few hints as to what the next game could be.

Some of the boring requirements include having a passion for making great games as part of a great team, being able to contribute innovative ideas and being able to undertake work with minimal oversight, but here’s what got us a little excited: Bethesda want someone with ‘extensive experience’ in regards to programming and optimizing for the PS3 and Xbox 360, DirextX 11 experience is seen as a plus. Perhaps the biggest giveaway is that they want someone who has played Bethesda Game Studios games.

We’re no experts in regards to hiring people for game development, but from what we have read it seems as if everything points towards a job listing for a next-generation Bethesda game which will be coming to the next Microsoft and Sony consoles, as well as PC – two titles fit nicely into this category, Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls VI – seeing as how Skyrim is still only a few months old we think it’s safe to assume that Bethesda is looking for a Future Generation Console Programmer who’ll be working on Fallout 4 – do you agree?

There is a possibility that Bethesda could be looking for someone to help create a game completely separate to Elder Scrolls and Fallout, however with such a following for these established franchises we don’t necessarily feel a new IP is required – with that said we sure that anything Bethesda’s team put their mind to will be a success.

Seeing as how it’s now been almost four years since Fallout 3 took the world by storm we really think that it makes sense to release this game’s sequel next. Many believe Sony and Microsoft’s next-gen consoles will show up at E3 2013 and arrive later in the year, therefore realistically we’re looking at 2014 before Bethesda’s “unannounced game on future-generation consoles” arrives – that means that fans of Fallout will have waited over 5 years for the sequel – very similar to the wait Oblivion fans had to endure before Skyrim finally arrived.

As we hear more on the matter we will keep you posted. Do you think Bethesda’s next game will be next-generation only? Or do you think they may sneak in a release next year before we see sight of Microsoft and Sony’s next-gen consoles?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls VI, Fallout, Fallout 4

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Let’s start with Steam’s Elder Scrolls discount, you can now buy Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, Oblivion Game of the Year Edition and Skyrim for $49.99 in total (would usually cost just shy of $100). Alternatively you can buy Morrowind for $9.99, Oblivion for $9.99 and Skyrim for $39.99, usually Morrowind and Oblivion GOTY Editions are priced at $19.99 each on Steam. As for Skyrim this will go back up to $59.99 on Thursday, which means it’s a 33% saving. If you are in Great Britain you can get Skyrim for £23.29, usually it costs £34.99.

As you probably already know by now the Skyrim Creation kit is now live and so is the Steam Workshop – so you can finally begin creating your mods and sharing them with the community. If you’re struggling to come to terms by the CK’s vastness you should check out this YouTube playlist and bookmark it, here you can watch videos created by Bethesda Softworks which introduce you to the kit and teach you the basics, needless to say more videos will be added to the playlist as time goes on. (We have embedded episodes 1,2 and 3 at the bottom of this page).

Finally we can tell you that the high-resolution texture pack is available for download for free, the DLC is pretty self-explanatory and should make Skyrim look even more beautiful than it already does – you can download it here.

Now that you have the Skyrim Creation kit, Steam Workshop and high-resolution texture pack please test it all out and come back to tell us whether or not you’re impressed. Does Skyrim look much better with the improved textures? Is the Steam Workshop as seamless as promised? Is the creation kit complicated to use? These are the questions we want answered!

More About: Bethesda Softworks, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Skyrim Creation Kit, steam

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Sadly the video (which has been embedded at the end of this post) does not go too in-depth in regards to features, but it does at least give us an overview of what’s coming our way. In this article we will highlight a few of the most-exciting features we spotted, don’t get too excited just yet as Bethesda still hasn’t told us when it will become available, all we know is that it’s “coming soon”

The video confirms that in many ways Skyrim’s creation kit will be similar to Fallout 3′s Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K), therefore you should expect a similar interface and general layout (see below), also what’s great is that this creation kit features the same tools which Bethesda’s developers used when making the game and they have put together plenty of readme documentation to help you out.

Below we have embedded a screenshot which gives us a glimpse of one of the creation kit’s many brand new and powerful features, this is the scene editor and it allows you to create complex interactions with NPCs.

Some mod creators will want to create their very own story-driven quests, to make these quests gripping you can utilize the new dialogue view, this allows you to change the direction of a question depending on what you choose your character to say – neat eh? You can see a glimpse of this new feature below.

Obviously designing environments is key to certain mods, therefore you’ll be glad to hear that there are visual gizmos which allow you mainipulate objects on 3D spaces whilst seeing dynamic realtime shadows – see below for an idea of what to expect:

The video then goes on to talk about a new scripting language called either ‘Pyrus’ or ‘Papyrus’, we can’t quite hear what it’s called, but they are our best guesses – the video doesn’t tell us a great deal about this though. Finally we get a glimpse of the seamless integration between the Skyrim creation kit and the Steam Workshop – uploading your mods to the workshop is simple, just go to ‘File’ and select ‘Upload plugin and Archive to Steam’ you can then name your mod, add a description, add tags and choose screenshots – one click on the Upload button then means it’s ready for others to download and a webpage is automatically generated for other players to check out.

When people check out the auto-generated webpage there will be a subscribe button, clicking on this will ensure that the mod is applied next time they run the game. We love just how seamless the integration sounds and can’t wait to get up close and personal with the Skyrim Creation Kit and Steam Workshop – can you?

Don’t forget to check out the video below for more details, what other features would you like to see added?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

You can find out everything you’ll ever need to know about this mod and download it here, in our article we will tell you all the exciting details and why over 150,000 people over at Skyrim Nexus have downloaded it already – we’ve also added a video at the bottom of this post which gives you a real taster of what to expect.

Installing this mod will result in much tougher dragon fights, without the mod dragons are often a pushover and 3-4 bandits can take down a dragon with ease, however this will soon change once the mod is running! Only the dragonborn will dare to take on Skyrim’s dragons and all your wit, determination and skill will be utilized with each dragon you face – dragons will boast better powers and throughout your Skyrim journey this mod will reveal new dragons which boast different shouts and improved textures.

When compared to normal dragons the mod will bring double health to all dragons by default, there will be resistance to physical attacks thanks to armor and “theme appropriate resistances” have been added – the dragons look much better too – below we have embedded an image showing the new swamp dragon and black dragon:

You can find out a great deal about this mod, how to install it and a fully detailed breakdown of the resistances, abilities and hardcore abilities it brings to dragons by checking out this text document – there’s also some optional plugins which may interest you.

Have you installed this mod? If so, would you recommend it? What’s your favorite change which this mod brings?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

According to this page the following mods are the most endorsed files in the last two weeks – so let’s get started.

The most endorsed mod this fortnight is called Dovakiin Hideout, you can see a fully descriptive video showing off this mod here. Basically it gives every house in Skyrim a hideout called the Dovakiin’s Hideout which is accessible via a basement door, this hideout is shared between all houses and once in here there are loads of neat things to check out. Firstly it acts as a hub so you can teleport from the hideout to any house (5 to choose from), also there’s plenty of weapon racks, display cases, mannequins, chests, satchels, plaques where you can store items and weaponry etc – you can also carry out crafting, smithing and smelting etc here. To install the mod check out this link, here you can see full instructions and locate all the files you need.

Next up is a mod by IcePenguin called ‘A Quality World Map – With Roads’, no prized for guessing what this mod does! Basically IcePenguin has hand drawn all of the roads in the game, without this, navigating around can often be awkward as you can’t always see the quickest /easiest root to a village. You can see a video highlighting this great mode here, to install it check out this link for everything you need to know. You can see a glimpse of the map with roads below.

Last but by no means least is the ‘Wars in Skyrim IV – Dark Rainbow is back’ mod by Alexandrox. This mod makes Skyrim a more dangerous place as its likely you will come across groups of enemies on your travels, you could face 5 dragons at once, or 2 factions at a time – it really is unpredictable and gets the adrenaline going. Below we have embedded a video which introduces you to the mod, check out this link for full details and installation instructions.

We would love to hear from you if you’ve discovered a Skyrim mod recently which you think our readers should know about, if so leave us a comment below. Have you used any of the mods mentioned in this post? If so, are they as good as we are led to believe?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Before we start talking negatively about the update we must point out that on the whole people seem pretty happy with the patch, one change which we have seen very positive feedback for is the jump in framerate which some people have reported. The official patch notes suggested that there would be better performance due to optimizations, well this turned out to be quite an understatement as people commenting on this thread over at the BethSoft forums are reporting massive framerate increases, especially in cities like Whiterun and inside buildings.

The bad news is that there are some reports of issues, firstly there’s reports of graphics ‘hitching’ post update (never occurred playing Skyrim 1.3) whilst another gamer says that since installing the update his game as crashed to the desktop (CTD) multiple times with no real pattern – this could be a fault specific to his hardware setup and configuration, however there are three reports of similar problems here. This thread over at the forums has 18 replies in regards to patch 1.4 BSOD and CTD problems, the people commenting are very knowledgeable so it may serve as a useful resource if you come across similar issues.

The final problem we will talk about is sound-related, apparently the game’s wind sound effect is sometimes very loud which is a nuisance, you can see all reports of the issue here and as you can see there’s three pages of replies, many say that the there is no pattern as to when the loud noise occurs, but most say it occurs when viewing the world map.

As this is a beta update we won’t worry about these issues too much as we expect them to be squashed by the time the update is rolled-out officially, you can leave your own feedback on the patch in this thread and reports minor beta bugs and changes which weren’t in the changelog here, for now why don’t you tell us of any problems you have experience with the beta patch in the comments section below.

Are you happy with the beta version of patch 1.4? Did your framerate increase significantly? Let us know!

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Bethesda say that you should only apply this patch if you are experiencing issues which are listed in the changelog, you can see this here, there’s tons of fixes and improvements which this patch will bring to the game so chances are it should nullify most of the common problems which people have been experiencing.

Before applying the beta update you should ensure that you back up your game saves just in case as they may inadvertently get overwritten, one thing worth knowing is that your game saves will still work with patch 1.3 if you have to roll back to this version of the game.

If you want access to the Skyrim 1.4 beta you need to open up Steam, click on Steam in the upper menu, then click setting, select the account tab and then click change in the Beta participation section, now simply select ‘Skyrim Beta’ from the drop down menu and select OK, Steam will now restart and then download the latest beta.

As this is a beta you must understand that it may be unstable, therefore don’t be too surprised if you encounter issues. Bethesda has clearly stated that you should only install this beta if you are experiencing the problem noted in the list of changes. Most of the fixes relate to minor bugs which occur during specific quests, however we are also promised memory and performance optimizations and less lag when game save filesize becomes large – the latter of these issues is what should put an end to the PS3 lag problems which have been affecting millions of people for the last few months.

Are you experiencing a problem which is not mentioned in the changelog? If so, be sure to leave us a comment below.

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Quite surprisingly the information came to light when someone called Thomas Burt tweeted the Bethblog this message: @Bethblog Wondering when we can expect to see the 1.4 update. Thanks. We’re sure that this isn’t the first question which has asked for such information, however it is the first which we have seen that got a respone, here’s what the official Bethesda Softworks Twitter account said in reply: @ThomasBurt should have some more info to share very soon. You can see the tweets for yourself here.

As you can see Bethesda say that information regarding the 1.4 update for Skyrim is going to be shared very soon, therefore we think it’s fair to say that the update should arrive ‘very soon’ as well. It has now been over a month since patch 1.3 hit Xbox Live, PSN and Steam, therefore we believe that Bethesda’s team of developers have been very hard at work on a substantial patch which will make the game better than it already is – perhaps it will prepare the PC version of the game for the Skyrim creation kit and launch simultaneously with it – we sure hope so!

We don’t yet have a full breakdown of changes which this update will bring, however we have been told that the lag which occurs on the PS3 version of the game should be eradicated. Some PS3 gamers remain understandably skeptical, and we don’t blame them as this isn’t the first time that an update has been release to fix this particular issue – we shouldn’t have to wait too long to see if people’s skepticism is correct.

For now all we know is that info regarding patch 1.4 will be coming very soon, but to us it sounds like it is almost ready to go live, we will have to tell you more when we hear more on the matter.

Do you think that patch 1.4 is less than a week away?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

The mod’s name doesn’t give a great deal away, obviously you instantly expect the dragons in Skyrim to be a more formidable force than they already are, but no, in fact this mode simply replaces the realistic scaly exterior of the game’s dragons with a skin which makes the dragon look like Macho Man Randy Savage – which by far makes this the most ridiculous mod we have ever seen.

Below we have embedded an image showing just how Macho Dragons look in the game, as you can see the dragons look a bit deformed and he is wearing the attire we saw Randy Savage wear in the ring during his time with the WWF and WCW.

You can install the mod yourself pretty easily, just head over to SkyrimNexus.com and download the relevant files, once downloaded, extract the archive and place the data folder into your Skyrim folder, once this has been done ensure that ‘Load Loose Files’ is checked in the launcher.

As you can imagine this mod is attracting quite a lot of attention, the YouTube video embedded at the bottom of this post has been viewed almost 2 million times and whilst some people love it, other hate it. Initially we thought that the snippets of voice had been added to the video, but it turns out the Macho Dragons speak while they attack you – things we’ve heard include “the sky’s the limit”, “I’m gonna get ya” and the infamous “yeah”.

Macho Man Randy Savage died back in May 2011 and whilst this may not be the most apt tribute at least it brings joy to those who use it and brings back some fond memories of his wrestling career, there are now calls to bring in Vanilla Ice to replace frost dragons and Eddie Grant to replace storm dragons – what other famous figures / characters would this mod work well with? We think that Goldmember (from Austin Powers) would be uncontrollably funny – how about you?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, elder scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Today we thought we would look at some games which Bethesda Softworks have developed in recent times and see if there’s any pattern which may perhaps help us predict just when Skyrim DLC will hit Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network and Steam. Before we get started let’s not forget that back in June Bethesda’s Executive Producer and Game Director, Todd Howard, previously stated that Skyrim add-ons would be more substantial than what we have seen from Bethesda in the past – so nothings set-in-stone.

Let’s start with Oblivion, this game was first released in March 2006 and soon after plenty of small downloadable packages were available to download such as horse armour, however we had to wait a little longer for additional quests. Firstly ‘The Orrery’ arrived in early April, but it wasn’t very extensive, the same could be said about ‘The Wizard’s Tower’, some larger-scale DLC arrived in June but we had to wait until November when ‘Knights of the Nine’ arrived when we could finally say that a substantial add-on had arrived – so we had to wait roughly 8 months in all.

The next notable release developed by Bethesda was Fallout 3, this hit all platforms in October 2008 and we don’t have to explain just how successful this game was. This time round Bethesda scrapped small downloadable packs and instead brought five expansions to the game, the first of which arrived almost exactly 3 months after the game’s release, the next four installments arrived within the next seven months (roughly 6-8 weeks apart).

Prior to Skyrim the last game which Bethesda Softworks had developed and released was Fallout: New Vegas – this arrived in late October 2010. Bethesda released four expansions which were similar in terms of size of content as Fallout 3, the first hit Xbox Live in late December, whilst PS3 and PC gamers had to wait until February 2012 – this means that 360 gamers had to wait roughly two months for the first DLC release, whilst everyone else had to wait four months. The next DLC release hit Xbox Live in May and was exclusive to Microsoft’s console for one month – all subsequent releases arrived at the same time on all platforms (‘Old World Blues’ July 19th and ‘Lonesome Road’ September 20).

Before we begin our Skyrim DLC release date predictions we will quickly remind you that the first two DLC packs will be coming to Xbox Live first, also we must point out that our predictions are based on previous trends and could in fact turn out to be far-from accurate.

If we had to place a bet on when Skyrim’s first lot of DLC will arrive we think it will come between 8 weeks and 12 weeks after the game’s release, however as we have heard no mention of DLC yet we think it will be closer to 12 weeks than 8. We believe that is development goes to plan content will be announced in late January and will arrive on Xbox Live somewhere around February 11, it won’t hit other platforms until at least 30 days later. After this we expect subsequent releases to be spaced out two months apart, the second DLC release will also boast at least 30 days of exclusivity on Xbox Live, but after this all other Skyrim DLC should hit all platforms at the same time.

So there you have it folks, we have been brave and predicted that the first-ever Skyrim DLC release will take place on roughly February 11, 2012 for Xbox Live (and a month later for other platforms), we then think this will be followed by more releases every two to three months – do you think that our prediction will turn out to be accurate?

More About: Bethesda Softworks, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For more Product-Reviews.net coverage:

• Follow Product Reviews on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to PR
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad