Bethesda is developing another mobile game, says Todd Howard

In the newest episode of Lex Freidman's podcast, Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard indicated that the studio is developing another title for mobile platforms. 

When asked about the differences between developing a game for consoles versus mobile, he said that "we have a new mobile game that we're working on that we haven't announced yet that I am in love with."

While Bethesda doesn't have much of a presence on phones, its name as a developer carries plenty of weight behind it. Hearing that the studio behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout released its first phone game in years draws plenty of attention.

Bethesda first entered the mobile game space with 2015's Fallout Shelter. That title became a revenue hit for the studio, and was later followed by The Elder Scrolls: Blades and The Elder Scrolls: Legends. 

Howard was light on details, but he indicated that it would aim for a more substantial experience than the developer's earlier mobile effort. Fallout Shelter, he mentioned, is a title that "people will sit there for an hour or two. [...] Large numbers of people will play it for hours a day."

Bethesda returning to the mobile space offers some interesting avenues for Microsoft to expand. In October, it mentioned that should its acquisition of Activision Blizzard go through, it planned to create a mobile storefront for Xbox games. Its plan was pretty straightforward: to bring in mobile players, it would have to "offer well-known and popular content."

Mobile's an area that Xbox hasn't tapped into, but Activision Blizzard has seen recent success in, thanks to Diablo Immortal.  And more broadly, other franchises like Apex Legends have seen their own degree of mobile success. 

Some studios, like Capcom and Bungie, are slowly but surely taking steps to enter the mobile market. In the instance of those two developers, it appears they're aiming to recreate the experience of their console titles for the mobile audience.