Sadly, I am not kidding.
I would love to be dead wrong, but too many things point in the direction I suggested.
There's no question that Nvidia and AMD are going all out on their parallel processing graphics architectures. I must warn you, however, that the cooling requirements are going to get worse for these devices. Also, you have to expect that cost will become worse and worse, especially considering that the verification engineering effort - already completely dominant as a source of development time and cost for complex chips for the past 10 years - is getting MUCH worse.
The deepest nodes - 16nm down to eventually 7 or 5 - are monstrously expensive to develope and actually reverse the cost curve of Moore's Law.
Ferroelectric memories will help. But they're a one time fix.
We are truly looking at the end of life for improvements in silicon-based microelectronics within the next 3-5 years. After that, other substrates will be needed - graphene, molybdenum sulfide, maybe silicene (though I wouldn't count on that one.) Once that replacement is ready, it'll make the last 40-50 years of technological progress look downright sedentary. But it would be hopelessly premature to expect such a capability to be ready before 2025 at best.
Regarding the Alcubierre drive - I don't think you're putting on the tinfoil hat at all. Somebody a year ago already determined that the mass of such an engine did not need to be much more than a ton or so, making it quite feasible (in theory.) It's an engineering task at this point (though quite a fierce one.)
Regardless:
By waiting more than, say, 6 years, Bethesda is basically communicating to their customers/fans/audience that ES SP is simply not a priority. The longer that lasts, the less likely it becomes they will ever spin themselves up to address the series again. Gold does indeed lose its luster in this business.
The fact that they placed two other unknown 'AAA' projects before ES6 and after FO4 is an EXTREMELY bad sign. The stake thru the heart is Skyrim Remastered - a complete and total waste of resources, since the return will be marginal.
Sorry, guys. The prognosis, on a purely objective level, is quite grim.