Even if MS forces it to be in their rotation, we'll all be dead and cold in the ground before Bethesda gets to Starfield 2: Emil Strikes Back. At this output rate, what are we looking at? 2040 at the earliest?
Bethesda, at least in theory, likes to play the long game. They like make others think they are hard at work crafting something special and that may have been true once upon a time but modern Bethesda might as be an adult daycare because I doubt a lot of meaningful work is done daily.
The good faith argument is that they kept going back to the drawing board due to a mix of elements, some out of their control. Starfield took longer than Fallout 4 took to come out and the latter at its worst is still better than the former at its best, so it all begs the question what in Hell is going on in that company because there are smaller companies that produced 2-3 games in the near decade it took to make Starfield.
Where did the money and time went? Because clearly it didnt go to the game.
To go back to the original point, I sort of sense a level of growing cynicism within the company, or at least it has gotten to the point where they cant keep it private anymore. Bethesda wanted this game to be huge and the fact is, it wasnt. I can imagine that they will quietly ditch Starfield and hope its not brought up again, or at least it's sequel will take longer than HL3 to come out, with Bethesda saying a Chris Chan's "Im waorking oan iti!" when its very few fans bright it up.
They are really needing a hit right now to stop the descent of their popularity that keeps growing faster by the fuck up but I can see them betting their chips on TES 6 and the Fallout TV series bailing them out.
Oh but believe me, Bethesda is very much pissed at the community for not eating their slope with a thankful smile, Emil's twitter rant was rather enlightening at the possible state of the company's morale after this game's failure to meet any sort of expectations, be them critical or financial. They will continue to be all PR smiles but if there is something social media is good for, is allowing these people to show who they really are for a brief moment.