A lot of people who played star field didnt pay for it. It was a game pass day one release, which I took to mean they had no hope it would sell well.

To be fair morrowind was full of clunk, many people were turned off by game mechanics, plus generally forgetting to save before dieing and losing your whole character.

I think the problem is they tried to scale up the production to reach more people, which increases costs. They can’t make a unique/interesting/quirky game because they have to sell to a huge amount of people or else its a failure. Morrowind likely didnt have the “market cap” skyrim did, but morrowind is full of creativity and choices.

Morrowind sold 200k copies its first year, and 4 million over its first 4 years while skyrim sold 7 million its first week and 30 million in its first 4 years.