Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remastered Has a Retention Problem, Nostalgia Isn't All That

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered was one of 2025’s biggest surprises, and while many players were nostalgic enough to head back to Cyrodiil, it seems that many only stuck around for a few hours before bowing out.

As reported by Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliott, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered sold around 1.1M copies on PlayStation 5 and was Xbox’s third best-selling game on the platform for that year, after Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Forza Horizon 5.

However, Elliott also reports that Oblivion Remastered did not retain as many players as Bethesda may have hoped, with “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.”

Guilty as charged from me, I must say. I had an expiring Xbox Game Pass subscription in April last year, so I decided to check out the remaster before it ran out.

I played around 10 hours of the game before dropping it in favour of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which ended up being one of my favourite games of 2025.

Bethesda Softworks

However, half of all players putting in 15 hours is actually a decent statistic, given how usually only a small percentage of players only ever actually finish an Elder Scrolls game.

Only 55% Of Oblivion Remastered Players Have Closed An Oblivion Gate

Looking at the percentage of unlocked achievements on the Steam version of Oblivion Remastered, 90.3% of players played enough to complete the first quest and escape the Imperial Sewers, but only 55.9% have closed an Oblivion gate.

Of course, this could mean more players just ended up ignoring the main quest and doing something else, but that’s still a rather massive discrepancy.

Despite the original Oblivion being a rather popular game in the wider Bethesda community, its remaster doesn’t seem to have as much of a splash with players unlike other titles like Skyrim or Fallout 4.

This may partly be down to the fact that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered launched without modding support, which is an aspect of these games which players find important.

It also runs rather poorly on PC, with microstutters and crashes appearing even on high-end computers, which may have put players off from playing for too long. That’s Unreal Engine for you, I guess.

Elliott says that they expect to see “Starfield outperforming Oblivion Remastered’s numbers when it inevitably comes to PS5”, with a rumoured PS5 release for sometime this year.

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