Starfield gets a release date and delay
Over the past few months, rumors about Starfield’s release date have managed to eclipse conversation about the game itself. From wild beliefs that the game would be shadow-dropped in April to conspiracies about a June release, the internet has been all over the place when it comes to speculation about Bethesda’s next big RPG release. Well, yesterday, all those rumors were put to rest. In a short video on Bethesda’s Youtube Channel, we were graced with Todd Howard confirming the release date for the game as September 6th, 2023.
Now, that release date is outside of the ‘first half of 2023’ release promised by Xbox this year and reinforced by Bethesda earlier this January in a FAQ blog post. For a lot of fans, this is disappointing. The game was meant to release last year on 11.11.2022 but was delayed into 2023, citing the need to polish it up before shipping. That delay announcement didn’t give us a concrete date, however, and details on Starfield have been quite sparse ever since. The radio silence led a large portion of the fanbase to believe that another delay was imminent, which turned out to be true. That being said, a lot of fans are supportive of this delay- with many claiming that three months isn’t too much longer to wait if it makes the final product substantially better.
The release date wasn’t all that was revealed in this trailer, however. After the announcement, Todd Howard graced our screens with a confirmation of when we’d see the Starfield showcase announced back in January. We’ll get to see this ‘deep-dive’ on June 11th- which is almost exactly halfway between now and the release of the game. Not too many other details were revealed, but it’s safe to say that this will be a 40-ish minute presentation that will give fans more of an insight into the deeper mechanics of the game such as space travel, RPG elements, and (hopefully) a glimpse of what kind of story and overarching narrative the game will have.
It shouldn’t be understated just how good Starfield looks in this most recent trailer. Although just over a minute and featuring no actual gameplay, it’s clear that Todd Howard and his team have improved the visual and performance quality of the game since the rocky showing at last Summer’s Xbox showcase. On top of this, real-time gameplay seen in the back of the announcement seems to show more diversity and a more stable frame rate than we’ve seen so far. Although it hasn’t yet been confirmed, this look revitalized the hope that the game would be playable in 60fps as opposed to the slow 30 that we’ve seen so far.
This ‘concrete’ news on the game should be enough to quell the vicious rumor cycle (for now at least). This should now be the last of the delays but don’t be too surprised if we see yet another pushback into November of this year. Hopefully, this September 6th date is more concrete than some other ones we’ve seen so far.
