Bethesda pencils in new Elder Scrolls title for 2010

Fallout 3 publisher Bethesda has indicated that the next title in the hugely popular Elder Scrolls series will be released in 2010.

Paul Oughton, publishing executive for Bethesda, also said that although the market for the Wii and DS has opened up more varied publishing opportunities, the company doesn't have any current plans to release titles for Nintendo consoles.

"At the moment we've got Fallout 3 for this year and potentially there's a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010," said Oughton. "At the moment we're not that interested in the Wii. We're going to stick to PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. We'll continue to pursue three or four titles a year and go for big titles," he said of the company's publishing plans for the future.

Oughton acknowledged that Nintendo has done a great job of expanding the games market to a mass audience, but he also expects that it will soon reach saturation point.

"We've seen games selling in the past 18 months that we never thought we'd see. We wouldn't have thought that pet games and cooking games would have a viable market five years ago. No publisher would have taken those products on," he said.

"But Nintendo bought new products in with vast amounts of marketing money to launch these into the minds of the consumer and made a market for them. Every other publisher then very quickly developed DS and Wii products and we're getting to saturation now."