Skyrim - Officially Announced and More

So, Bethsoft sent us the official Skyrim announcement.  It doesn't say much other than confirming all the platforms and we'll see the first real details in the next Game Informer:

Bethesda Softworks Announces The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Highly Anticipated Sequel to Launch 11.11.11

December 13, 2010 (Rockville, MD) — Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today confirmed the upcoming release of The Elder Scrolls® V: Skyrim™, the next installment in the award-winning Elder Scrolls series and follow up to the 2006 Game of the Year, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion®. 

Developed by Bethesda Game Studios® under the direction of Todd Howard, Skyrim will be released on Xbox 360®video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows® worldwide on November 11, 2011. Details on the game will be revealed in our exclusive cover story in Game Informer®’s February issue, which ships to subscribers in early January 2011.

“It’s exciting finally to announce the game,” said Todd Howard, Game Director on Skyrim. “We’ve been working for many years on Skyrim and the technology behind it. A new Elder Scrolls game has been a long time coming, and we can’t wait to show it off.”

If you're a Facebook user, you'll find Skyrim at the Elder Council.  If you missed the teaser trailer, check out the teaser site at Elderscrolls.com.

The big discussion is over the engine - a topic that has been much debated on our forums.  CrunchyHemorrhoids writes in and points out the Tweets at the centre of all this, so we may as well cover it here as well.  Community Manager Nick Breckon said:

We can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new. And it looks fantastic.

The Bethsoft feed said:

Seeing lots of speculation about #tesv game engine. It's brand new... and it's spectacular!

When RPS' Jim Rossignol asked for clarification, Nick Breckon replied:

It's a new graphics/gameplay engine built internally. We'll have more details down the road.

While this sounds pretty straight forward, I don't think it's as simple as it sounds.  Contrast against Eurogamer's interview a while back:

Eurogamer: Is it fair to say then that it's based on existing technology?

Todd Howard: The technology is ours and it is inspired by the technology we have. We have a lot of it. But that's our starting point - the Fallout 3 tech. It started with Morrowind, we went to Oblivion, we did a lot between Oblivion and Fallout 3 because now we had final hardware - with Oblivion we had six months on final hardware, so Fallout 3 technically does a lot more than Oblivion. The new stuff is an even bigger jump from that.

I can say it is on the existing platforms, which we're really happy with. You almost feel like you have a new console when you see the game.