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Population data extrapolated from the Morrowind CS and the Oblivion CSE
My recorded observations serve as proof that the island of Vvardenfell is indeed far denser than the province of Cyrodiil (approx. 1.835 times denser, to be exact). The smaller NPC count for Oblivion is, I should assume, primarily due to the fact that Oblivion featured fully voiced NPCs, which made them more time-consuming for Bethesda to develop. As the technology behind video game development continues to improve, I have often wondered about how NPCs might behave in the video games of the future. I predict that developers -- especially large-scale RPG developers like Bethesda Softworks -- will eventually turn to using high-quality text-to-speech technology in the creation of NPC dialogue. Otherwise, the interactive NPC count will continue to dwindle, and we might eventually see a TES game in which only characters associated with the main questline would offer dialogue. Skyrim's NPCs don't even interact with each other anymore (at least not nearly as much as they did in Oblivion), nor do they offer Rumors. And since Oblivion, we have actually seen main quest-related NPCs given higher priority with voice actors like Sean Bean, Terence Stamp and Patrick Stewart. Long gone are the myriad interesting conversation topics of Morrowind. One has to wonder for the future of Tamriel's AI-driven residents.
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And though Cyrodiil has pretty hot and humid climat and rocky landscape* - which is definitely not a very comfortable territory to live - the Central Province of the Empire should certainly have more population than the small imperial colony in the ashy land of Vvardenfell.
* according to PGE, 1st Edition
P.S. Please excuse me my Ingrish. ^_^
That would be less expensive to produce even though it cuts down on the types of players interested. It may be that the 1st person shooters who like to 'beat the game' & move on are the ones who are paying for the game because there are so many of them. That would save a lot in producing the game & we would see a shallower, not highly populated, & not very pretty game as we did in that horrid on line production they did. That one was so lean & buggy that it was difficult to tell that it came from the same studio.
I think they are either scuttling the ship for business purposes or their smart designers are gone. Perhaps it is both. Perhaps we ought to investigate getting together & purchasing the rights to Oblivion & be able to mod it & expand it as we pleased (except for whacking children & being a porno game that would reflect badly on their studio).