When The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim launched on November 11, 2011, it went right into the line of fire.
Just three days earlier, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had exploded onto shelves, carrying the unstoppable weight of one of gaming’s biggest annual franchises.
Releasing a single-player RPG while Call of Duty dominated the market looked like a bold gamble.
The common refrain was that no one would touch Skyrim when a massive shooter was controlling the market conversation.
How Did Bethesda Respond to the Doubts?
But Bethesda’s then-marketing head Pete Hines wasn’t interested in playing safe.
He recalled in later interviews that people kept repeating the same line: “Everybody’s gonna play Call of Duty."
Nobody’s gonna buy your game.” His response was simple — brand power doesn’t automatically mean a better product.
Bethesda believed Skyrim could stand on its own, and Hines was ready to put the marketing dollars he had directly against Activision’s juggernaut.
The budget wasn’t nearly as large, but he was convinced quality and longevity would outlast the hype.
That confidence came from experience, not arrogance, as Bethesda often pushed past the so-called industry “rules."
Critics argued that bringing Morrowind to the Xbox was a gamble since deep PC RPGs weren’t made for consoles.
When Oblivion came out in spring, often seen as a dead period for major launches, critics warned it wouldn’t work, yet it thrived.
Skyrim was simply the next chapter in Bethesda’s tradition of trusting its games and betting against conventional wisdom.
Did Skyrim Actually Outlast Call of Duty?
The gamble paid off in ways few could have predicted.
Modern Warfare 3 was a commercial monster, reportedly selling around 30 million copies.
Skyrim, however, managed to sell seven million units in its first week and kept building momentum year after year.
Call of Duty rolled into its yearly sequel, whereas Skyrim endured. Expansions, endless re-releases, and one of the most vibrant modding communities in gaming history made sure that players kept returning.
By 2025, it will have sold over 60 million copies across platforms.
What makes this story stand out is that Bethesda wasn’t just aiming to survive Call of Duty’s release week but wanted to prove something bigger.
Hines described it as going to war with Activision not to topple Call of Duty in raw numbers, but to show that a game built with different priorities could still command the spotlight.
How Does History Judge That Decision Today?
Looking back now, it’s hard not to see the move as one of the boldest scheduling decisions of the past two decades.
Skyrim didn’t fold under Call of Duty’s shadow, it made its own path and set a new bar for success.
The fact that players are still wandering its snowy peaks today, long after Modern Warfare 3 was left behind for its successors, proves that Bethesda’s confidence wasn’t misplaced.
Skyrim came out in 2011 with something to prove, and it did.
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