Yup. No one should be surprised and this is far better in a lot of ways.

This is how Bethesda has worked for decades now. One game at a time, developed over several years. Have someone else develop/oversee the non-mainline games (eg. New Vegas, ESO) but work on all the mainline games with singular focus. No splitting teams or any of that.

The difference is the teaser. Usually, they drop the teaser, announce the game, it's out in a few months. Although, they also teased Starfield early, but I think some things like the pandemic and the acquisition had a larger effect on the development time.

About a year after Starfield, they'll probably get deep into TES: VI pre-production. Maybe a bit of writing will be done, but they'll probably still be bouncing ideas (which I think they have quite a few already) off each other for a few months and seeing where it goes from there.

I'm guessing major development begins around mid-2025 and they work on that for next three or so years. Maybe a 2028/2029 release. Day one exclusive on next-gen Xbox, probably.