If you have been playing Skyrim since its release you have probably completed the game’s main quest, so what’s next? Well there’s loads of side quests to take on, but these are quite repetitive and not very challenging, we suppose you could play through the game again with another race – but that won’t interest all of you, therefore what people really want is downloadable-content which will bring completely new quests to Skyrim.
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?
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