Although life continues to be grim for fans of The Elder Scrolls series, as the wait for the sixth entry in the series gets more difficult to bear with each passing day, 2025 brought a smile to more than a few of them with the release of Oblivion Remastered, a remake of the fourth entry in the series by Bethesda powered by Unreal Engine 5 which leaves the original gameplay almost intact by having it run on top of the original Gamebryo engine (which was later supplanted by the Creation Engine which is unlikely to be left behind due to some critical development issues).
Right from the outset, the game's shadowdrop appeared successful, which wasn't surprising given how popular the game remained following its 2006 release. However, nostalgia is not as powerful as some may think for engagement, as many players got their fix in about 10 hours before dropping the game.
In a new report shared a couple of days ago, Alinea Analytics' Rhys Elliot looked at how well Xbox-published games performed on PlayStation 5, starting with Oblivion Remastered. The remake sold 1.1 million copies on the system, "proving the pull of Bethesda’s legacy catalogue on PlayStation hardware," Elliot wrote in the Substack post. "Over 80% of Oblivion’s PS5 copies were sold during its first month on the market, but some discounts to $33 over the past couple of months have led to small sales spikes," the analyst added.
While sales were solid, player engagement wasn't impressive at all for a massive RPG, as "around half of Oblivion Remastered players on PS5 played for less than 15 hours, showing that most people got their nostalgia fix before meaningfully progressing." Considering how easy it is to lose oneself in Cyrondiil before making any real progress in the main story, this highlights that a remake needs more than improved visuals to keep players engaged past the point where they get their nostalgia fix.
However, there could be a few more reasons why those who purchased Oblivion Remastered on PlayStation 5 did not play for long, besides the lack of new content. For starters, the game still runs poorly across all formats, and the performance hiccups make it challenging to enjoy the new visuals. In addition, the game does not support mods on consoles (such as an upcoming promising multiplayer mod), preventing it from achieving the same enduring popularity as its sequel, Skyrim.
With Oblivion Remastered selling reasonably well, regardless of how long players have lost themselves in Cyrodiil, it will be interesting to see how Starfield will fare on the system. While the latest RPG by Bethesda is far from being as popular as previous games from the studio (due to the massive expectations fans had, according to Skyrim's design lead Bruce Nesmith), Alinea Analytics' Rhys Elliot believes it will outperform the remake developed by Virtuos. Hopefully, the rumored 2.0 update will also provide reasons for jaded players like me to return to the game, whose opinion on it soured a lot in the months after its release.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
