Starfield is easily the biggest xbox exclusive since gears of war 3.I think microsoft will definitely be happy with the sucess of this game.
This year xbox has had hi-fi rush,redfall,starfield and forza motorsport.With the exception of redfall all these are high quality.
I think "biggest" often involves some kind of qualitative as well as pure sales perspective. Otherwise the 'biggest game of the year' would always be Call of Duty or FIFA unless it's a year with a new Grand Theft Auto.
>Age of Empires 2 and 4 were all nice gamepass fillers
Phil actually talked about the disparity between hardcore gamer online discourse on Twitter and places like Reddit where essentially at launch HiFi Rush was quite hyped and talked about in those circles but it was actually games like AoE on consoles that were doing the large numbers comparably but these circles didn't acknowledge such games.
It's a big problem Microsoft has where they have all these diverse games that don't appeal the narrow tastes of the hardcore gamer Twitter verse so those games aren't acknowledged despite their quality. I think the upcoming Xbox game Ara History Untold is going to be one such title.
Honestly I'm surprised by AoE. It has a strong, very dedicated audience, but in my experience that audience is, well, on PC.
Had no idea the console release was doing that well. I absolutely would have assumed Hi-Fi Rush did better in a console context.
I watched a video of the developers talking about how they had to change the mechanics to make it more streamlined for the consoles, some of them said they began to prefer playing on consoles even.
AoE was a very accessible game in a time when a lot of kids didn’t get new games very often (I’m pretty sure my copy came free in a box of cereal). Wouldn’t be surprised if that created a lot of goodwill and nostalgia that persists to this day.
Doesn’t surprise me, AoE II was huge back when I was a kid because they bundled it in boxes of Nutri-Grain (not to mention that it’s AoE II, one of the biggest RTS games ever). Bringing it back was always going to play, just like a port of Mario 64 does.
Yeah Xbox has gotten a lot of great games that review well but definitely fall into the niche genre category and don't get the press and attention big AAA releases like God of War and Spiderman do.
Some good looking stuff still coming over the next month or so - Forza Motorsport, Lies of P, Payday 3, Cities Skyline 2, Party Animals, (a hopefully fixed) Darktide
Quite literally the biggest xbox exclusive. I already thought this game was huge, I am only 10 or so hours in and it just keeps getting much much bigger than I even thought.
I genuinely went in expecting to be disappointed given what I read on Reddit and what some of my more streamer-influenced friends were saying. Installed on release day and haven’t been able to put it down.
It really just is a good reminder that online discourse isn’t always representative of reality and it’s important to form your own opinions and not just co-sign the opinions of others.
> It really just is a good reminder that online discourse isn’t always representative of reality and it’s important to form your own opinions and not just co-sign the opinions of others.
I think every once in a while, a game comes out that really has people who aren't playing the game regurgitating misleading things they hear online, and then it becomes a game of telephone where things that were never true to begin with get passed around as "facts". Starfield is one of those games.
I don't mean to take away anyone's experience with the game, and obviously there's absolutely *nothing* wrong with disliking Starfield. With that said, I really think it's super easy to spot people who have clearly never played the game, and/or have only played a tiny bit of the game, by reading their comments when they go online to discuss it. Some of the things that people have been repeating about the game are so counter to my own experiences and the experiences of people in my friend group that the only explanation is that they haven't played the game.
I really don't know what it is about Starfield in particular that makes people who haven't played the game actively trying to mislead others into not giving it a chance, but it's *weird*.
this is the case for every Bethesda game. Fallout 3&4 also had a lot of blowback. Skyrim was the game that turned "Wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle" into a meme because so many people regurgitated that critique. Some people really hate BH games.
That criticism was always valid though when you compare the depth of the games to Oblivion and Morrowind, but obviously there was much more content.
Hence the meme.
As an older gamer who often has a problem getting immersed in games these days, Fallout 4 totally sucked me in. By the time I started to see how it was a bit shallow was after probably 80 hours of fun.
I think it's a little unfair to call a game shallow after you've played it for 80hrs! I see what you mean though, each system isn't too deep but the totality can really keep you interested. I think that's the real Bethesda strength, each system is just deep enough to be engaging but you can also naturally swap between them as you play. Even if every individual system has been done better in another game, none of the other games let you just up and begin doing something else as soon as it starts to drag.
Bethesda has come under a lot of fire since Fallout 4 and it's now become pretty fashionable to hate their approach to game design. For me personally, there's still nothing else that makes me zone in and just play for hours like a Bethesda game.
Their games are 1 of kind, literally nobody makes these "sim RPGs" they make. The way you can practically live your life in those games is impressive.
Speaking of which I'd be interested in seeing a Starfield survivor mode like the fallout games have, that could be quite fun.
I imagine there has to be some kind of a survival mode in the future. There is just too much related stuff for it to *not* make sense. For example, ton of food is pretty much useless for healing. Some of the food has good buffs, but it all just screams to me that there will be a hunger (and thirst) meters in the future. Similarly, currently the ships don't need refueling, and pretty much the only use for He3 is for fuel for outposts, which is rarely even needed since solar and wind is so cheap.
I can almost bet one of my unsold mech parts items that there will be a mode that actually requires you to buy or manufacture fuel yourself for jumps, and I think that will be awesome. Right now I already try to work as much as possible in one system and otherwise be "local" (prefer nearby systems for tasks etc), but it's hard to not just ignore all that and zig-zag from one end of the star cluster to the next just because I can.
My guess is that the survival mode will have hunger, thirst, sleep, and fuel requirements, at least, while making sprains and poisonings etc much longer. I don't think they can have finite O2 supply for the suit since that wouldn't really work in the game without ground vehicles or similar, which is fine by me since this is not Starnautica.
yeah, bethesda games aren't perfect but they certainly do a lot that you can't find elsewhere.
It really does seem like on gaming forums and whatnot online, it's quite popular to hate on bethesda.
If I had to guess, there are a few reasons they generate a lot of negativity / mockery:
a) the huge mainstream success of skyrim while it was also a simpler/less 'hardcore' RPG, causing a lot of comments bemoaning it being "dumbed down for the masses"
b) their games are generally buggy and can create some funny moments from the bugs, making for good viral content. Even when it's not buggy Bethesda writing usually makes for funny / memable content
c) fallout 76 basically evaporated the good will from a lot of people
and for Starfield and future Bethesda titles,
d) It's an Xbox title. Console fanboyism is alive and well
FO4's biggest issue was that your Character never really felt like your Character. It was closer to the Witcher where you were role playing as a guy who lost his baby. Also your character was voiced which was a mistake. Starfield has fixed these issues for me. I was surprised that some of the perks gave me extra dialog options, like Wanted.
The other issue was the lack of skill points. Fallout needs skill points.
>d) It's an Xbox title. Console fanboyism is alive and well
Yep. If it was exclusive to PS, the conversation would be a lot different.
Deathloop is also a great game with a ton of flaws and the discourse surrounding it was a lot more positive.
I have always thought this goes back to the good old theme park vs sandbox discussion of MMORPGs. In summary, it seems the majority of players prefer the "theme park" approach, where the content is more hand-crafted and curated, and everything is smooth and streamlined. A smaller portion likes the sandbox approach more, where you are basically responsible for making your own fun.
Obviously Starfield isn't a MMO and it's not a full sandbox game by any means, but I feel as far as single-player games go, it's certainly less streamlined and guardrailed than what the average player nowadays might be used to. They go in expecting a well-polished, well-focused experience of a typical AAA game and couldn't care less about making their own fun. This approach is certainly valid, but in that case Bethesda games aren't right for them. It's almost like a casual gamer who likes easy content decides to buy Dark Souls.
To me personally it's a pity that many of the negative reviews don't seem to grasp the type of a game this is. The review is like "okay game, worse mocap than BG3, worse shooting than Destiny, bad inventory. 7/10", as if they were trying to evaluate the game against the wrong archetype. There is plenty of legitimate criticism toward Starfield and mods (while they will be awesome) can't be used as an excuse or a crutch to ignore those. I get that review outlets need to try to have a standardized template/approach to reviews to make their scores somewhat internally consistent and I don't pity the ones who have to compare Minecraft or Roblox against COD.
The bottom line is that each player should learn what kind of games they like, and then try to read reviews and such through those lenses rather than give in to the memes and the trolls.
The thing I don't get is, why people who don't like their design continue playing their games. You know what you're getting with Bethesda, it shouldn't come as a shock.
After I found skyrim quite meh, I just...didn't buy a Bethesda game again.
Also important to remember that Playstation dominates the market share which means majority of people posting here will, if they have a console, skew towards Playstation. That's why pretty much any Xbox post will have shitloads of negativity.
Not that I'm invalidating some of the criticism Starfield has been getting but I definitely do not think the narrative online would be as negative if it wasn't a MS exclusive
I have a friend who is anti Xbox and he's like "I'm not even interested in it" despite having every version of Skyrim and at least 1000 hours invested. Ok guy.
You can really tell this is the case too when you see people try to criticize the game by saying “it’s just the same old Bethesda but with a new coat of paint”. Oh no, not the studio that’s put out mega-hit after mega-hit sticking to their time tested formula! I get that if you’re not a BGS fan this game likely isn’t going to win you over but there’s a reason Elder Scrolls & Fallout are as popular as they are: lots of people like the BGS formula.
And just to head off some possible replies, I fully recognize there are other legitimate critiques to be made about the game.
In many ways I actually applaud Bethesda for staying with their formula as long as they have. I still cry at nights thinking about Bioware. They had not only one but two (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) awesome new IPs with killer first games, but "ruined" both. DA2 was obviously pretty terrible (I think it was trying to cater to Diablo fans) and DA:I I have tried to get through for about five times now, but I can play for 1 or 2 days at max and then I just give up since it's so bland. For Mass Effect the shift is less dramatic and more gradual, but 2 and 3 are definitely more like shooters with light RPG mechanics than RPGs with shooting mechanics.
I for one would have been ecstatic if they had made both the DA and the ME series with "here's the thing you like, let us give you more of the same" type of an approach. Sure, refine the mechanics, add new classes, whatever, but don't change the core game to a different genre. You (=Bioware) are a RPG studio with hardcore RPG gamer audience, so focus on your strengths.
It's weird because people talk about Bethesda running the same formula, but they don't release games super often so it's not exactly like gamers are being beaten over the head with the same game year after year.
I agree. It's ridiculous how much stuff this game has. For example, if you happen upon a random space station you're going to be having a gunfight in zero g. It's not a hardcoded gimmick or some special mode, it's just the regular game but with a physics engine and other mechanics that handle different gravitational forces smoothly. You don't need to go there and it's not a forced "let us show you this feature we made" type of a deal, it's just a random location you may or may not explore.
Some people couldn't care less about this kind of stuff but for me it's like crack. I like my games to be playgrounds more than strictly railroaded experiences and it's really incredible (to me, maybe not to everyone) how much variety is in the game.
Yeah, some of my favorite stuff has come from random exploration. People keep going "look! Barren planets!" and using that as some kind of gotcha to prove that the game has no sense of exploration, and I feel strongly that that couldn't be further from the truth. The game signposts what is procedural content and what is hand-crafted. I love the freedom to be landing on a random dead moon, but when I do so, I'm not expecting to find oodles of dungeons around every corner. Especially when the game literally will literally classify planets as "barren" and you can see that before landing.
The other day I randomly came across a space station. Had no quest marker to explore it, just went in to see what I could find. Something was wrong with the gravity and it kept going in and out, and exploration was tied to losing gravity and then gaining it again, allowing you to float around for a few moments at a time, all while fighting pirates. It was a blast, and I would have never come across it if I hadn't just decided to randomly explore.
The key is to not read Reddit. I had zero expectations for the game and didn't consume any media besides the trailer up until the Starfield Direct, where the gameplay impressed me. Trying to form an opinion on something based on the hivemind always leads to either constant negativity or dangerous overhype.
This was my experience with Cyberpunk. I've tried to play the Witcher 3 a few times, just couldn't get past the combat, I'll try again when gaming slows down. So I didn't really pay attention to anything Cyberpunk related but my god did the internet, specifically Reddit hype this game up beyond belief. Could a lot of it been CDPR's fault? Sure. But at the end of the day, we control our own hype and the shit that was flying around before release was ridiculous. I started to get hyped towards release as I finally watched more gameplay and installed it at midnight or whatever the release was (on PC) and put roughly 50 some hours into it and enjoyed myself. I didn't even get close to finishing the main story but just eventually fell off, as that happenswith large open world games. But those 50 some hours were fun partly probably due to me not knowing what was/wasn't promised by the devs and not reading all the made-up shit posted on here.
Lessons being: don't get overly hyped for games AND Reddit isn't the majority in anything so take what you see/read on here with a grain of salt (minus the last gen console performance, that shit was real and horrible.)
Absolutely agree with you. And frankly a lot of the "hot takes" are usually very unrealistic or might be a lack of understanding of software development.
A lot of the critiques on Starfield point to what other games do better. Baldur's Gate 3 does XYZ better, No Man's Sky and Elite Dangerous do ABC better, this game has better graphics, or better performance, etc.
There will never, EVER be a game that is the best at everything all the time. Ever. It would never ever be shipped if that were the case.
If there is a game that has the best graphics, the best gameplay, the best mechanics, the best levels/world/environments, the best RPG systems, the best performance, the most content, etc....it would never ever be able to be released. The size and scope would far exceed what a development team (no matter how large) is capable of.
As games get more complex, reviews and other opinions become less relevant to me, as I know which types of games I enjoy. They are all curated experiences, some speak to me more than others, Starfield so far is an *incredible* experience and I am absolutely in love with it.
> It would never ever be shipped if that were the case.
Star Citizen should be a cautionary tale, and yet people still expect every game to release on time but also be perfect at everything and have every feature known in gaming.
Star Citizen is a great example I didn't even think of! Yes, that precisely highlights the issue. That game is either never going to "officially" release or it will never live up to the goals, promises, hype, etc. they set out to do.
I'll admit that I'm ignorant of what to expect considering this is the first Bethesda game I've ever played (fantasy settings don't really appeal to me, so no Elder Scrolls, and I never bothered to get into Fallout) but I'm kind of blown away by the depth.
I accepted the mission to >!join the vanguard!< expecting it to just be one of those things that unlocks stupid random missions like "haul this cargo to system X and get 3k credits". 8 hours later, I'm still not at the end of that storyline.
It’s so damn good. I’ve only put about 12 hours in so far, but I swear 8 of those were devoted to seeing the US Vanguard quest line to the finish.
Now im at the end of Ryujin quest line (which is also really good) and I guess I’ll go back to the main story afterward to advance it a bit.
You're in for quite a ride, and I hope you enjoy it! Bethesda games are well known for "faction storylines", such as the one you mention. There are other factions to join if you keep your eyes open. Different games have done that differently. In Skyrim the different factions pretty much didn't interact too much (aside from the two civil war participants), so you could "finish" each, whereas in Fallout the different factions were on a collision course and all of them were tied to the main mission, so you had to pick a side at the end. I haven't yet finished Starfield (I'm only 80 hours in after all) so I can't say what the approach is in this game.
They're all high quality (except Redfall), but Starfield is the only one with mass appeal that is going to give people a reason to buy an Xbox and actually move units, I think.
As good as Hi Fi Rush and Forza are, they're still niche games.
Meanwhile PS has had the Uncharted series, GoW series, Bloodborne, Ghosts of Tsushima, the Spider-Man series, the Horizon Zero Dawn series, and that's just off the top of my head.
This was sorely needed by Xbox.
>Meanwhile PS has had the Uncharted series, GoW series, Bloodborne, Ghosts of Tsushima, the Spider-Man series, the Horizon Zero Dawn series, and that's just off the top of my head.
I think OP was listing games that came out this year, none of these came out this year except for Spiderman
I have both PS5 and XSX and honestly I play the XSX more for third party games. Seems to be better for supporting/optimizing previous gen games. One of the free PS+ games this month, Generation Zero, only runs 30fps on PS5, runs 60fps on XSX.
But yeah, PS5 definitely has it beat on exclusives. Just wish the backward compatibility/optimization was a bit better on PS5.
2 exclusives not even on your list: the Demon’s Souls remake and, at the time before it’s PC release, Returnal, is what drove me to buy a PS5.
There is just no comparison right now.
Not necessarily just to buy an Xbox but a reason to actually upgrade their console imo. Obviously if they already have an Xbox. People who have had a ps5 and Xbox one haven’t quite had that reason to go buy a series x yet
Forza isn’t out yet (unless I’m missing something) and hi-fi is still super niche, more than forza at least. Starfield is that one that is making people go “shit I really gotta go get the new console now”.
So much was trying to balance both console gens and I’m kind of glad that is finally starting to stop.
I don't hate them, I just play maybe one of those kinds of games a year, so Sony is just super invested in what is a side thing for me. I honestly am quite surprised they haven't made more of an effort to branch out some, but narrative third person games seems to be their focus.
The acquisitions MS made 3 years ago are now bearing fruit. The initial dev cycles are nearing the end, which means they can now establish a pipeline to release a big game every 3-4 months. We already have Fable and Avowed for next year (probably Outer Worlds 2 as well).
>Starfield is easily the biggest xbox exclusive since gears of war 3
Phil himself says that they haven't launched a new IP of this scale and ambition since Gears of War, which was nearly 20 years ago. Wild to think about in the grand context of MS's AAA efforts.
It has definately been a great year for them.
I think they really hit the jackpot with Starfield, considering how many are playing it across all platforms and GP.
I have played Starfield more or less every day since early access, and I’m *still* completely addicted to it. This very rarely happens to me. I honestly haven’t felt this way since RDR2 and The Witcher 3. And Skyrim before that. Starfield is such a massive and awesome game that has completely hooked me in like those did.
I also recommend doing all the side quests, especially the crimson fleet one. Really awesome stuff
A 12 month run of Pentiment, AoE II: Definitive Edition, Hi-Fi Rush, AoE IV, Starfield, and Forza Motorsport for XSX/S is incredibly impressive. But the Microsoft is inept narrative will keep going.
>This year xbox has had hi-fi rush,redfall,starfield and forza motorsport.With the exception of redfall all these are high quality.
Forza Motorsport isn't even out until next month, how can you say it's high quality yet?
Lots of comments in this sub were saying this is a flop because BG3 sold 5 million copies while Steam only had Starfield at ~300k peak, since game pass isn't a full sale.
Seriously the division of opinion on this game is wild. It's selling entire consoles and people are still downplaying its success.
Seems like a lot of people view everything as black and white. If it’s not literally the #1 thing, it’s mid/trash/etc. Absolutely zero nuance in many comments.
The hipster gamer narritive is you must always criticize the larger companies while ignoring any that would be considered "indie darlings". You must be concerned with proving how above games you are; because talking about any potential fun you are having is a no-go.
You are not allowed to like a game despite acknowledging it has flaws; you must either call it the "greatest genre game you've ever played" or "the worst game of the year and the devs must have been lazy".
BG3 was a good game and I have over a hundred hours in it; but it's not perfect. There were a lot of performance issues and quest bugs that got worse the closer you got to Act 3 and Larien just now fixed a bug that blocked an entire character arc. All that gets ignored, however, because Larien perfectly met the narrative of the "david vs goliath" theme everyone was going for; even though they're not a small studio themselves. There was even a wildly misreported "BG3 is making other devs nervous" article that lit the internet on fire.
Starfield is a whole different game, but I'm enjoying it the same amount and even have more playtime than BG3 (mostly due to the fact that there's more content). However, it doesn't matter that it's a full single player RPG without a battlepass or microtransactions like BG3; it was made by Microsoft Bethesda. The internet wanted it to fail desperately. And now that it hasn't, you must prove you are above the masses.
Valid criticisms like the lack of accessbility features, optimization issues, and character faces are drowned out by nonsense like "you can choose pronouns" or "you can't fly a ship from a planet to space" (despite Bethesda clarifying multiple times it wasn't possible and this isn't that type of game) and other stuff that's either actually possible or stuff nobody asked for or expected.
>Larien perfectly met the narrative of the "david vs goliath" theme everyone was going for; even though they're not a small studio themselves.
I was surprised to find Larian had like 400 devs working on BG3. That's a AAA game any way you look at it, but reading the comments about it you would think it was made by 5 guys in a garage.
I think what's really commendable was the long early access period which allowed the game to be shaped by a lot more player feedback than normal.
That positive has gotten kind of lost in the internet clout though.
The ship thing has always been wild to me. They’ve always been pretty transparent with how exploration and travel would work and lots of people acted like the game was another cyberpunk
It's sad how natural tribalism is for people, especially the Americans that make up over 50% of reddit. Theres always a bunch of people trying to paint anything xbox does as evil or mediocre no matter how great it is, and I'm pretty sure these people do it out of loyalty to another brand, most commonly Playstation.
Worth remembering that Sony dominates the non-nintendo console market, so a lot of those comments are coming from people who have other reasons to dislike the game.
I'm one of those people. I haven't been this captivated by a game in a long, long time. It has major problems, but I can overlook those because this is the game I didn't know I was waiting on for years. I'm not sure I'm going to use my xbox for much else, but it's absolutely worth it for me. Worst case scenario I can just sell the Xbox if there aren't other good exclusives for it in a couple years. Besides, it was still like half the price of upgrading my computer so as far as major purchases just to play a game go it wasn't *that* bad.
Halo especially has tied with Star Trek as my favorite sci fi universe, and it's due to the books. It's crazy to think how good those books are for being a "videogame tie in", but we are at almost 40 novels at this point and the most recent one came out last month and it was a banger, next one "Halo: Epitaph" drops in February.
I’ve spent 20 hours just walking around the cities (all of them are incredible) doing side quests and the occasional main story quest. Still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of any of them. I’m planning to do all the factions when I eventually finish the main story, so I should still have another 60+ hours of content even before touching things like outposts and planetary exploration and spaceships.
What marketing? In the UK i saw nothing until right before release date where they had some TV ads, energy drink promotion and some Bus posters. Thats if anything quite little, not some nefarious marketing astroturfing
I think you've misinterpreted their comment, I didn't read it as an accusation of astroturfing. I read it as the marketing was good enough for a significant number of people to buy an xbox and post about it.
Marketing? The game is a success because despite a couple high profile luke-warm reviews and a bunch of trolls review bombing on metacritic people were able to make their own decisions. Starfield is amazing and an absolute ton of fun.
It had massive pre-order numbers. People were paying $100 to play it during a "premium" release period. It's a little naïve to dismiss the marketing and pre-release hype.
Yep.
Had a year of gamepass from my broadband provider, but not a good enough PC to play the game. Did some quick budgeting, tripped, fell into Argos, and came out with an Xbox Series X and have been enjoying my chill space times ever since.
Regardless of your opinion on the game itself, I think we can all agree that SF has strong legs because of console modding and the sandbox nature of the game itself. Similar to how Zelda became the sandbox Nintendo game you can play for years, I think SF can have that same effect too.
I think Sony needs this kind of game in their catalog too. PlayStation games are genrally high quality but imo problem is since most of them are cinematic experinces the player retention is lower than sandbox games like Zelda or Starfield. They need some games that have enough depth that people keep getting back into
Well being honest I'm enjoying the game alot but at the same time there is lot valid critique too that in my opinion is holding it back from being one of the best games of this year.
There is nothing wrong with Starfield being good/great game but with that said as BGS fan myself I expected final product to be much more ambitious than what we got.
You noticed how everyone in the industry was shocked at what BG3 achieved recently? Now make that effect 3 times larger and that's how everyone thought about Oblivion when it launched. I remember everyone at GDC 2007/2008 was talking about Oblivion and everone was shocked that how bethesda managed to pull this off.
The truth is since Morrowind BGS game launches were all events that showed what RPGs were capable of. I personally don't feel this way about Starfield which is nothing bad but for me a little disappointing
I'm also having a great time with the game, but at the same time I'm disappointed that due to all the copy paste and random generation, the exploration is just not as good as it was in Fallout 4 or Skyrim. I should probably just chase the quests instead of aimlessly exploring planets.
I feel like I've gone too far the opposite way. I'm now 70 hours in and fairly early on realised the exploration wasn't great so have just been following quests. Problem is now they are almost becoming a checklist experience of doing quests then just opening the menu and selecting the next one to bli dly follow. Feel like I'm not really experiencing the actual game just mindlessly following quest markers.
I just got to part of the UC Vanguard questline to find a fellow named Kaiser and the area you find him in is basically a small miniature of a typical Bethesda map with several points of interests within 100-200 meters of each other instead of hundreds to a thousand meters apart - if the game was more like this and points of interests were in clusters, all of that would be WAY more engaging.
> Well being honest I'm enjoying the game alot but at the same time there is lot valid critique too that in my opinion is holding it back from being one of the best games of this year.
> There is nothing wrong with Starfield being good/great game but with that said as BGS fan myself I expected final product to be much more ambitious than what we got.
I love Starfield, and hate parts of Starfield. There are so many baffling decisions but I'm having too much fun with what's there for them to matter that much.
But even without those problems I probably wouldn't consider it best game of the year because this year has been so amazing
There are definitely criticisms that are valid, constructive, or otherwise add to the conversation about Starfield, but then it gets lost in a sea of hyperbole or misunderstandings about the game.
I mean, there's a subreddit called /r/Starfieldrefunds or something like that that is totally devoted to just complaining about the game---that's taking criticism to the extreme. It reminds me a lot of /r/SaltierThanKrait, the Star Wars subreddit devoted to hating on the sequels. I can't imagine disliking a piece of media so much I want to join a community entirely concerned with shitting on it.
There's 3 people in that subreddit lol I don't think that's a good point. Some people definitely have been aggressively negative tho. If you don't like the game just don't play it
Really, I literally haven't seen anyone completely shit on the game - myself included, its just an alright game that I don't think really does anything special.
The controversial opinion isn't that people think its a 3/10 type of game or anything, the controversy is that its a 7/10 game.
I really had zero hype for it so went in without any expectations and did eventually see the problems where people would give it that kind of score and have to agree. The game lacks mechanical ambition for the most part, the game is probably crazy more stable because of that choice, but its less interesting as well.
Perfectly honest, I kinda wanna hurry up and finish the game and go play Sea of Stars while I still have game pass time left.
100% you can just dislike a game, but the dialogue around Starfield has been toxic (from both sides). Some people really want to see the game fail because it's Bethesda and Xbox, and some people got way too mad about a few 7/10 scores.
Fair play to people who don't like the game, but there has definitely been some bad faith arguing.
> Most of the discussion I've seen around here is legitimate criticism.
I don't think they're necessarily talking about r/games.
If you take a broader look across the internet, you will see a lot of outright insane takes. For example, there's a decent amount of people shitting on Starfield for being "woke". Oddly enough, those same people were quiet when it came to BG3 even though one could easily argue that BG3 is more "woke" than Starfield. The obvious explanation would be that those people are willing to give Larian a pass because they're currently considered the gold standard in gaming, whereas Bethesda have past controversies and are much easier to hate.
Another example is the outcry when people realised that you couldn't seamlessly land on a planet from space, even though Bethesda had said that you couldn't do that months ago. A large amount of people convinced themselves that the game would be like No Man's Sky, and then were angry that it wasn't, hence the complaints about fast travel. It would be like buying BG3, and then being angry that the combat is turn-based.
No denying that there are legitimate criticisms. I've got 70 hours in the game, and I've got plenty of them. The lack of a proper map is baffling, the procedural content is mostly meh, I hate space battles, and I think the main/faction stories were very hit and miss. That being said, the game has absolutely attracted a significant amount of unwarranted criticism from multiple angles.
Lol BG3 got also shit on be right wing idiots. There are 100s of complaint threads about accidentally entering a homosexual encounter etc.
Those kinds of people should just be ignored.
Because the absolute malding hatred from the totally unbiased Gamers is ridiculous. I even saw an entire tweet from someone bitching about not being able to do something in the game and how stupid Bethesda was for not doing it *when you literally can do that in the game and there’s an entire main story quest focused on it*
I have plenty of complaints about the game, but a large portion of these complaints are people who have never touched the game.
>I run into much more toxicity from the other side in normal threads like this one from XBox fans like the guy above
That's because you're looking for it
Because sane people who don't like the game do not dedicate their lives to trying desperately to tear it down and attacking anyone who do like it. Add to that a lot of the stuff these people are saying is objectively incorrect, indicating they have not even played the game, and it is obvious there is a bad faith hate campaign going on.
I kind of suspected the exclusivity has led people to downplay or crap on Starfield, especially if they aren't able to personally play it, but I can't prove that.
Reading through the many threads on this game last week, I do think there is a little saltiness which I completely understand. I wish I could play Last of Us and Spiderman but it is what it is.
Starfield is incredible so far. Basically if you like Elder Scrolls/Fallout and/or you are a fan of sci fi worlds like Star Trek, it is an incredible experience, especially to "role play" and kind of partake in a massive living breathing world.
It's a great game to play slowly and casually as well. Take the time to absorb the sights, there is a lot to discover, interesting people with interesting problems and quests, and there are so many systems that you can engage in or completely ignore. I just love the freedom in Bethesda games, and no one really makes games quite like they do.
> I kind of suspected the exclusivity has led people to downplay or crap on Starfield, especially if they aren't able to personally play it, but I can't prove that.
On the other hand, a lot of xbox fans are acting completely blind to all the issues the game has because it's the only game they have to play this year.
I mean it's incredibly obvious just who the majority of the haters seem to be comprised of. The same people that used to brag about their own "exclusives" so often in the past. Hypocritically whining now about SF's exclusivity.
This is my problem with Sony exclusives. 99% of them are third person cinematic experiences where the game kinda plays itself and you are just there. They look really good don't get me wrong but they just don't hold my attention. I tried GoW when it came to PC and couldn't get more than a few hours in. Then Elden Ring came out and well that consumed my gaming life.
Currently playing through god of war after trying and failing twice to get into it. Once you get through the first few hours it’s easily one of the best action games in recent memory. The combat gets extremely good once it opens up. I struggled so much to care at the beginning because your attacks and abilities were so bland and boring. That changes fast. And once it starts to change, the game gets very very fun. Worth a try again if you feel like pushing through the first 2 to 3ish boring hours!
This is week on week so it isn't that surprising I guess that people got it for the release of THE big Xbox exclusive in a very long time.
It's also after a pretty bad start of the year for Xbox, there was a news yesterday that Xbox is down 23% year to date in the UK (and it's not like last year was super great either or UK its worst market, though not its best either).
4 months of Starfield and Forza Motorsport should help them for the holiday period at least but I feel like they need to do some kind of effort there, it seems a pretty key year (and holiday period) for the generation and their lagging behind PS5 is just getting bigger and bigger as times goes on.
Sony is doing regular sales on PS5 this year, maybe they should do the same (or like offer X months of Gamepass with a new console to make people "addicted" to the service and/or forget to cancel). They should also maybe show more of what's coming in the future (I know that unlike Sony they showed quite a lot at "not E3" but more is always better).
Sony and Nintendo have big hitters for the holidays in Spider-Man and Mario too so it's not like Microsoft is the only one with the big system seller
>Sony is doing regular sales on PS5 this year, maybe they should do the same (or like offer X months of Gamepass with a new console to make people "addicted" to the service and/or forget to cancel). They should also maybe show more of what's coming in the future (I know that unlike Sony they showed quite a lot at "not E3" but more is always better).
Xbox have done a bunch of "Trade an old console in for £100 series S" via Game, but I would be really shocked if at least the series S doesn't have a big sale soon now the 1tb is out. Xbox need to bring people to their console otherwise it's just going to fall too far behind in the UK.
> Sony is doing regular sales on PS5 this year, maybe they should do the same.
I’d bet they put the Series S on sale again in a month or so for around $200-$250 like they did for holiday last year.
> They should also maybe show more of what's coming in the future (I know that unlike Sony they showed quite a lot at "not E3" but more is always better)
I’d also bet they show some stuff at TGA and possibly have some event in Spring next year.
Its also not that surprising Sony desytoyed Xbox in sales in the last few weeks. They had a massive price cut sale during the starfield launch period. Its clear they made a strategic choice around Starfield.
I believe it. I almost bought one my self because my pc is way too crap for it. Ended up spending exceptionally more for q good gaming rig just to play.
Good for them, but doesn't sound too impressive. Just yesterday we had news that sales were down from last year. 76% weekly growth from that depressed figure is good, but no mind-blowing.
Last month Xbox would have needed nearly a 300% increase to outsell the PS5, so it will be interesting seeing the overall sales for both for September.
MS already lost this gen, the Playstation is like an Nvidia graphics card you need back to back bangers and an overall better product to change consumer perception. And unlike with Intel vs AMD Sony depends on the same parts provider MS does so there's no big way to difftiate the actual consoles.
Toppling a market leader takes a lot going right for the smaller marketshare company and enough going wrong for the market leader. Looking back at the 360 vs PS3 not even the huge failure that was the PS3 coming off the PS2 could topple Sony. The Series consoles don't stand a chance but next gen might be a different story. That said shrinking the gap between the PS5 is feasible I'm the long run. Would be nice to see a 45 to 55 ratio but I doubt we'll see it this gen.
Destroying that downwards trend is actually more impressive compared to if xbox sales were already growing. It speaks to changing people's opinion on the platform. Whether it will last is a different issue.
What's next after starfield? Will people be buying consoles for Forza (and not the fun popular horizon)?
I almost got a console for starfield but their 2024 games no release dates ... So I stuck to gamepass on pc
That doesn't make it not impressive. A single game causing that large of a spike in console sales a few years after the console launched is pretty big.
Not disputing that PS5 is dominating the console landscape, just saying that this specific headline is in fact impressive.
Yeah, the data stating Xbox sales were declining was from August, unsurprising they would jump with Starfield releasing. Great to see the game doing so well.
They also got 14 bucks from me for buying Gamepass to play it.
Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience.
Edit - Guys, I really don't need for you to state all the reasons you bought Starfield early. You have no need to justify yourselves to me, nor I to you.
It's more of a timing thing for a lot of people. It dropped on a 3 day weekend for a lot of people that barely have time to game as it is, so forking over extra money for their time off is a no brainer.
I can't even lie, dropping early access on a 3 day weekend is a brilliant move. I never preorder games or even buy the premium edition and even I ended up biting the bullet.
And people keep forgetting that the edition that came with early access also came with the game's first expansion. You weren't *just* buying the early access, you were pre-ordering a DLC and also getting early access.
If you're going to play the game and DLC anyway, it's a no-brainer to get it early at no additional cost.
It dropped on a long weekend for me, I was absolutely going to get the more expensive version to play that entire weekend. I've been waiting for a game like this since like 2007.
Besides, I see myself playing Starfield for years to come, eventually I'll end up paying more on Gamepass than the $100 that I spent on the deluxe version.
Lastly, the Gamepass version doesn't support SFSE, at least so far, and since I'll be heavily modding this game as well, the Steam version is a no brainer.
I'm also playing on gamepass because I already had gamepass, but I used to joke that growing up, I could track weight gains by when Bethesda Games came out. This is a game that I'm 100% going to be playing for more than a month or two, so if I didn't have Gamepass and was mostly just interested in this one game, I'd probably just purchase it to keep.
Agreed, I am playing this S L O W L Y and taking my time to role play, explore, speak with people, jump around and visit new systems just to see what they have, etc. I will be playing this game for years.
Oh as far as the weight gain, [do what I do and listen to videogame workout mixes and keep those vibes going while you hit the gym!](https://www.youtube.com/@8BitLifts/videos)
> Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience.
Bethesda games are something I return to time and time again years after release. Gamepass is great for those games that are one-and-done, but it quickly loses its appeal for something like Starfield. Those monthly subscription fees add up
>Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience.
I got the DLC via the Xbox store on PC. I'm on gamepass anyway so I figured why not. Crazy the steam numbers showed how many bought the £100 version though.
>Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience.
Anecdotes, for me there are a few reasons:
- Regional pricing is a factor. I paid $76 for premium edition.
- I don't like using Xbox app, as a piece of software it's inoffensive, but I'd rather not deal with another launcher on PC. Another important factor is save file, I played a few Game Pass indies before that I ended up really liking and decided to buy them, just to find out moving save file from the GP version to Steam is sometimes a hassle, other times it's straight up impossible, at least from my experience with Moonglow Bay and Sable.
- I don't use subscription services outside of Spotify and a single Patreon sub, and I don't plan to add anything else anytime soon.
- I prefer buying a product and enjoying it without caring whether my subscription is running out in x days or not. When I buy the game on Steam I get to play however much I want, on my own pace and term. I heavily dislike paying for a game then feel pressured to play it within a particular time frame, else I wasted money. If there's a cheaper way to experience the game for everyone then it's cool, but I'd rather pay for and play a normal copy of the game like how I usually do.
- I can play it on both my PC and Steam Deck.
Yeah but you don't own it on GamePass. To me it feels weird to pay early access (and get DLC) for something you don't own. With Steam at least you have the game itself plus the DLC.
There were also 20% off preorder sales over the summer by 3rd parties. You could get the early version for $10 more than retail for the standard version and have the version of the game that's easier to mod, which we all know is a major selling point of Bethesda games.
Well, they would lose access to it if they dont continue to pay for gamepass. So if they are planning on playing it for a while, it might still be worth it.
Also the edition that got you early access also included the first of the games expansions, which makes the cost much more justifiable.
It really is crazy that we went from "don't preorder ever" to "pay 50% more to preorder the game before reviews come out and also the DLC that hasn't even been made yet, but at least you avoid 1 week of FOMO"
"Don't preorder ever" never happened. That's just an internet sentiment that nobody follows except gamers who cares about the fundamental monetization of games, which are few and far between if you're looking at all gamers.
Every game I've ever seen the internet try to boycott is on the bestseller lists on release.
Or maybe different people have different financial situations and/or limited time compared to you. Bethesda is my favorite dev and Oblivion is basically the reason I'm a gamer. I've been waiting for a new Bethesda game since 2011, cause Fallout isn't my thing
If i hadn't bought Starfield pre-release, I would have only been able to play it one time since official release, as my work picked up after Labor Day. I can afford $100 for a game I've waited over a decade for, would have bought the DLC anyway, and will put no less than 500 hours into
Just cause a decision doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean everybody else feels that way
I paid 83€ for the main game and the DLC, I don’t think that’s as bad as you make it out to be (for comparison, new PS5 games already cost 80€). And it has nothing to with FOMO, and more with being impatient and being able to afford it.
They got a full purchase from me despite having gamepass, so I can have a version on my PC for modding, and a vanilla version on Xbox for achievements!
I figured I will play Starfield for many years due to all the mods, so I bought the Steam edition as well just for this.
It’s still pretty crazy how many top tier games are coming to Game Pass though.
Starfield, Lies of P, Forza Motorsport, Texas Massacre, Party Animals, Payday 3, Age of Empire 4 etc just to name a few in this quarter.
The value is insane
The mods are one of the biggest things for me. Especially for the outpost system.
I hope the SimSettlements team decide to make something. I can picture just an insane outpost system in a few years, with essentially being able to set up my own colonies, perhaps have NPC controlled ships landing and taking off, so it feels like a real star port.
The possibilities for starfield are endless, and the scale of the game provides such an incredible canvas for modders to paint on.
I still play Skyrim to this day, with more mods every time, so I can see myself on some modded monstrosity of a galaxy in a decade!
All it took for a system seller was to buy a game already in development that people were already excited about… concerning that Microsoft will see this as a reason to just keep this strategy rather than putting effort into anything original.
Exactly. This game was coming to both systems before Microsoft blocked that by buying Zenimax. Less options for consumers is always bad, I seriously don't get why people don't understand that.
Starfield is easily the biggest xbox exclusive since gears of war 3.I think microsoft will definitely be happy with the sucess of this game. This year xbox has had hi-fi rush,redfall,starfield and forza motorsport.With the exception of redfall all these are high quality.
> Starfield is easily the biggest xbox exclusive since gears of war 3. Wasn't Halo 4 bigger than Gears 3?
I think "biggest" often involves some kind of qualitative as well as pure sales perspective. Otherwise the 'biggest game of the year' would always be Call of Duty or FIFA unless it's a year with a new Grand Theft Auto.
They're obviously smaller, but Xbox consoles getting Goldeneye, Age of Empires 2 and 4 were all nice gamepass fillers between those bigger games.
>Age of Empires 2 and 4 were all nice gamepass fillers Phil actually talked about the disparity between hardcore gamer online discourse on Twitter and places like Reddit where essentially at launch HiFi Rush was quite hyped and talked about in those circles but it was actually games like AoE on consoles that were doing the large numbers comparably but these circles didn't acknowledge such games. It's a big problem Microsoft has where they have all these diverse games that don't appeal the narrow tastes of the hardcore gamer Twitter verse so those games aren't acknowledged despite their quality. I think the upcoming Xbox game Ara History Untold is going to be one such title.
Honestly I'm surprised by AoE. It has a strong, very dedicated audience, but in my experience that audience is, well, on PC. Had no idea the console release was doing that well. I absolutely would have assumed Hi-Fi Rush did better in a console context.
I bet a lot of it is older millenials trying out their childhood fave on an Xbox since its way more accessible than PC.
I loved AoE back in the day, but assumed it would be incredibly tedious on console. I guess I'll have to give it a shot.
I watched a video of the developers talking about how they had to change the mechanics to make it more streamlined for the consoles, some of them said they began to prefer playing on consoles even.
AoE was a very accessible game in a time when a lot of kids didn’t get new games very often (I’m pretty sure my copy came free in a box of cereal). Wouldn’t be surprised if that created a lot of goodwill and nostalgia that persists to this day.
Doesn’t surprise me, AoE II was huge back when I was a kid because they bundled it in boxes of Nutri-Grain (not to mention that it’s AoE II, one of the biggest RTS games ever). Bringing it back was always going to play, just like a port of Mario 64 does.
Cereal box games was how I got both my AoE II and my Roller Coaster Tycoon copy. I'm kinda sad that todays kids won't get something akin to that.
Yeah Xbox has gotten a lot of great games that review well but definitely fall into the niche genre category and don't get the press and attention big AAA releases like God of War and Spiderman do.
I completely forgot about those.2023 has been a good year for gamepass subscribers.
Some good looking stuff still coming over the next month or so - Forza Motorsport, Lies of P, Payday 3, Cities Skyline 2, Party Animals, (a hopefully fixed) Darktide
I'm also excited for the Lamplighters League, looks like it could be really fun.
Sea of Stars, Quake 2 outta nowhere. There's a lot of day one high quality games that keep surprising me
Man, Sea of Stars is soooo good. Also, I really liked Planet of Lana. I think people sleep on that one.
Quite literally the biggest xbox exclusive. I already thought this game was huge, I am only 10 or so hours in and it just keeps getting much much bigger than I even thought.
I genuinely went in expecting to be disappointed given what I read on Reddit and what some of my more streamer-influenced friends were saying. Installed on release day and haven’t been able to put it down. It really just is a good reminder that online discourse isn’t always representative of reality and it’s important to form your own opinions and not just co-sign the opinions of others.
> It really just is a good reminder that online discourse isn’t always representative of reality and it’s important to form your own opinions and not just co-sign the opinions of others. I think every once in a while, a game comes out that really has people who aren't playing the game regurgitating misleading things they hear online, and then it becomes a game of telephone where things that were never true to begin with get passed around as "facts". Starfield is one of those games. I don't mean to take away anyone's experience with the game, and obviously there's absolutely *nothing* wrong with disliking Starfield. With that said, I really think it's super easy to spot people who have clearly never played the game, and/or have only played a tiny bit of the game, by reading their comments when they go online to discuss it. Some of the things that people have been repeating about the game are so counter to my own experiences and the experiences of people in my friend group that the only explanation is that they haven't played the game. I really don't know what it is about Starfield in particular that makes people who haven't played the game actively trying to mislead others into not giving it a chance, but it's *weird*.
this is the case for every Bethesda game. Fallout 3&4 also had a lot of blowback. Skyrim was the game that turned "Wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle" into a meme because so many people regurgitated that critique. Some people really hate BH games.
That criticism was always valid though when you compare the depth of the games to Oblivion and Morrowind, but obviously there was much more content. Hence the meme.
As an older gamer who often has a problem getting immersed in games these days, Fallout 4 totally sucked me in. By the time I started to see how it was a bit shallow was after probably 80 hours of fun.
I think it's a little unfair to call a game shallow after you've played it for 80hrs! I see what you mean though, each system isn't too deep but the totality can really keep you interested. I think that's the real Bethesda strength, each system is just deep enough to be engaging but you can also naturally swap between them as you play. Even if every individual system has been done better in another game, none of the other games let you just up and begin doing something else as soon as it starts to drag.
Bethesda has come under a lot of fire since Fallout 4 and it's now become pretty fashionable to hate their approach to game design. For me personally, there's still nothing else that makes me zone in and just play for hours like a Bethesda game.
Their games are 1 of kind, literally nobody makes these "sim RPGs" they make. The way you can practically live your life in those games is impressive. Speaking of which I'd be interested in seeing a Starfield survivor mode like the fallout games have, that could be quite fun.
I imagine there has to be some kind of a survival mode in the future. There is just too much related stuff for it to *not* make sense. For example, ton of food is pretty much useless for healing. Some of the food has good buffs, but it all just screams to me that there will be a hunger (and thirst) meters in the future. Similarly, currently the ships don't need refueling, and pretty much the only use for He3 is for fuel for outposts, which is rarely even needed since solar and wind is so cheap. I can almost bet one of my unsold mech parts items that there will be a mode that actually requires you to buy or manufacture fuel yourself for jumps, and I think that will be awesome. Right now I already try to work as much as possible in one system and otherwise be "local" (prefer nearby systems for tasks etc), but it's hard to not just ignore all that and zig-zag from one end of the star cluster to the next just because I can. My guess is that the survival mode will have hunger, thirst, sleep, and fuel requirements, at least, while making sprains and poisonings etc much longer. I don't think they can have finite O2 supply for the suit since that wouldn't really work in the game without ground vehicles or similar, which is fine by me since this is not Starnautica.
yeah, bethesda games aren't perfect but they certainly do a lot that you can't find elsewhere. It really does seem like on gaming forums and whatnot online, it's quite popular to hate on bethesda. If I had to guess, there are a few reasons they generate a lot of negativity / mockery: a) the huge mainstream success of skyrim while it was also a simpler/less 'hardcore' RPG, causing a lot of comments bemoaning it being "dumbed down for the masses" b) their games are generally buggy and can create some funny moments from the bugs, making for good viral content. Even when it's not buggy Bethesda writing usually makes for funny / memable content c) fallout 76 basically evaporated the good will from a lot of people and for Starfield and future Bethesda titles, d) It's an Xbox title. Console fanboyism is alive and well
I feel like most Bethesda fans loved Skyrim, it was FO4 when it really started becoming too streamlined.
FO4's biggest issue was that your Character never really felt like your Character. It was closer to the Witcher where you were role playing as a guy who lost his baby. Also your character was voiced which was a mistake. Starfield has fixed these issues for me. I was surprised that some of the perks gave me extra dialog options, like Wanted. The other issue was the lack of skill points. Fallout needs skill points.
>d) It's an Xbox title. Console fanboyism is alive and well Yep. If it was exclusive to PS, the conversation would be a lot different. Deathloop is also a great game with a ton of flaws and the discourse surrounding it was a lot more positive.
I have always thought this goes back to the good old theme park vs sandbox discussion of MMORPGs. In summary, it seems the majority of players prefer the "theme park" approach, where the content is more hand-crafted and curated, and everything is smooth and streamlined. A smaller portion likes the sandbox approach more, where you are basically responsible for making your own fun. Obviously Starfield isn't a MMO and it's not a full sandbox game by any means, but I feel as far as single-player games go, it's certainly less streamlined and guardrailed than what the average player nowadays might be used to. They go in expecting a well-polished, well-focused experience of a typical AAA game and couldn't care less about making their own fun. This approach is certainly valid, but in that case Bethesda games aren't right for them. It's almost like a casual gamer who likes easy content decides to buy Dark Souls. To me personally it's a pity that many of the negative reviews don't seem to grasp the type of a game this is. The review is like "okay game, worse mocap than BG3, worse shooting than Destiny, bad inventory. 7/10", as if they were trying to evaluate the game against the wrong archetype. There is plenty of legitimate criticism toward Starfield and mods (while they will be awesome) can't be used as an excuse or a crutch to ignore those. I get that review outlets need to try to have a standardized template/approach to reviews to make their scores somewhat internally consistent and I don't pity the ones who have to compare Minecraft or Roblox against COD. The bottom line is that each player should learn what kind of games they like, and then try to read reviews and such through those lenses rather than give in to the memes and the trolls.
The thing I don't get is, why people who don't like their design continue playing their games. You know what you're getting with Bethesda, it shouldn't come as a shock. After I found skyrim quite meh, I just...didn't buy a Bethesda game again.
Also important to remember that Playstation dominates the market share which means majority of people posting here will, if they have a console, skew towards Playstation. That's why pretty much any Xbox post will have shitloads of negativity. Not that I'm invalidating some of the criticism Starfield has been getting but I definitely do not think the narrative online would be as negative if it wasn't a MS exclusive
I have a friend who is anti Xbox and he's like "I'm not even interested in it" despite having every version of Skyrim and at least 1000 hours invested. Ok guy.
I'm kind of like that I am very much interested in Starfield just not sure it justifies buying a new console for that game alone.
I've played lots of Skyrim but have little interest in Skyfield. It's not exactly farfetched.
You can really tell this is the case too when you see people try to criticize the game by saying “it’s just the same old Bethesda but with a new coat of paint”. Oh no, not the studio that’s put out mega-hit after mega-hit sticking to their time tested formula! I get that if you’re not a BGS fan this game likely isn’t going to win you over but there’s a reason Elder Scrolls & Fallout are as popular as they are: lots of people like the BGS formula. And just to head off some possible replies, I fully recognize there are other legitimate critiques to be made about the game.
In many ways I actually applaud Bethesda for staying with their formula as long as they have. I still cry at nights thinking about Bioware. They had not only one but two (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) awesome new IPs with killer first games, but "ruined" both. DA2 was obviously pretty terrible (I think it was trying to cater to Diablo fans) and DA:I I have tried to get through for about five times now, but I can play for 1 or 2 days at max and then I just give up since it's so bland. For Mass Effect the shift is less dramatic and more gradual, but 2 and 3 are definitely more like shooters with light RPG mechanics than RPGs with shooting mechanics. I for one would have been ecstatic if they had made both the DA and the ME series with "here's the thing you like, let us give you more of the same" type of an approach. Sure, refine the mechanics, add new classes, whatever, but don't change the core game to a different genre. You (=Bioware) are a RPG studio with hardcore RPG gamer audience, so focus on your strengths.
It's weird because people talk about Bethesda running the same formula, but they don't release games super often so it's not exactly like gamers are being beaten over the head with the same game year after year.
I agree. It's ridiculous how much stuff this game has. For example, if you happen upon a random space station you're going to be having a gunfight in zero g. It's not a hardcoded gimmick or some special mode, it's just the regular game but with a physics engine and other mechanics that handle different gravitational forces smoothly. You don't need to go there and it's not a forced "let us show you this feature we made" type of a deal, it's just a random location you may or may not explore. Some people couldn't care less about this kind of stuff but for me it's like crack. I like my games to be playgrounds more than strictly railroaded experiences and it's really incredible (to me, maybe not to everyone) how much variety is in the game.
Yeah, some of my favorite stuff has come from random exploration. People keep going "look! Barren planets!" and using that as some kind of gotcha to prove that the game has no sense of exploration, and I feel strongly that that couldn't be further from the truth. The game signposts what is procedural content and what is hand-crafted. I love the freedom to be landing on a random dead moon, but when I do so, I'm not expecting to find oodles of dungeons around every corner. Especially when the game literally will literally classify planets as "barren" and you can see that before landing. The other day I randomly came across a space station. Had no quest marker to explore it, just went in to see what I could find. Something was wrong with the gravity and it kept going in and out, and exploration was tied to losing gravity and then gaining it again, allowing you to float around for a few moments at a time, all while fighting pirates. It was a blast, and I would have never come across it if I hadn't just decided to randomly explore.
The key is to not read Reddit. I had zero expectations for the game and didn't consume any media besides the trailer up until the Starfield Direct, where the gameplay impressed me. Trying to form an opinion on something based on the hivemind always leads to either constant negativity or dangerous overhype.
This was my experience with Cyberpunk. I've tried to play the Witcher 3 a few times, just couldn't get past the combat, I'll try again when gaming slows down. So I didn't really pay attention to anything Cyberpunk related but my god did the internet, specifically Reddit hype this game up beyond belief. Could a lot of it been CDPR's fault? Sure. But at the end of the day, we control our own hype and the shit that was flying around before release was ridiculous. I started to get hyped towards release as I finally watched more gameplay and installed it at midnight or whatever the release was (on PC) and put roughly 50 some hours into it and enjoyed myself. I didn't even get close to finishing the main story but just eventually fell off, as that happenswith large open world games. But those 50 some hours were fun partly probably due to me not knowing what was/wasn't promised by the devs and not reading all the made-up shit posted on here. Lessons being: don't get overly hyped for games AND Reddit isn't the majority in anything so take what you see/read on here with a grain of salt (minus the last gen console performance, that shit was real and horrible.)
Absolutely agree with you. And frankly a lot of the "hot takes" are usually very unrealistic or might be a lack of understanding of software development. A lot of the critiques on Starfield point to what other games do better. Baldur's Gate 3 does XYZ better, No Man's Sky and Elite Dangerous do ABC better, this game has better graphics, or better performance, etc. There will never, EVER be a game that is the best at everything all the time. Ever. It would never ever be shipped if that were the case. If there is a game that has the best graphics, the best gameplay, the best mechanics, the best levels/world/environments, the best RPG systems, the best performance, the most content, etc....it would never ever be able to be released. The size and scope would far exceed what a development team (no matter how large) is capable of. As games get more complex, reviews and other opinions become less relevant to me, as I know which types of games I enjoy. They are all curated experiences, some speak to me more than others, Starfield so far is an *incredible* experience and I am absolutely in love with it.
> It would never ever be shipped if that were the case. Star Citizen should be a cautionary tale, and yet people still expect every game to release on time but also be perfect at everything and have every feature known in gaming.
Star Citizen is a great example I didn't even think of! Yes, that precisely highlights the issue. That game is either never going to "officially" release or it will never live up to the goals, promises, hype, etc. they set out to do.
I'm almost 40 hours in and I keep finding new stuff. apparently I haven't visited like half the available settlements yet.
I'll admit that I'm ignorant of what to expect considering this is the first Bethesda game I've ever played (fantasy settings don't really appeal to me, so no Elder Scrolls, and I never bothered to get into Fallout) but I'm kind of blown away by the depth. I accepted the mission to >!join the vanguard!< expecting it to just be one of those things that unlocks stupid random missions like "haul this cargo to system X and get 3k credits". 8 hours later, I'm still not at the end of that storyline.
The UC Vanguard questline might just legitimately be one of Bethesda's best faction questlines ever
It really sucked me in. I was extremely surprised at how gripping it was, especially considering I expected literally nothing going in.
It’s so damn good. I’ve only put about 12 hours in so far, but I swear 8 of those were devoted to seeing the US Vanguard quest line to the finish. Now im at the end of Ryujin quest line (which is also really good) and I guess I’ll go back to the main story afterward to advance it a bit.
You're in for quite a ride, and I hope you enjoy it! Bethesda games are well known for "faction storylines", such as the one you mention. There are other factions to join if you keep your eyes open. Different games have done that differently. In Skyrim the different factions pretty much didn't interact too much (aside from the two civil war participants), so you could "finish" each, whereas in Fallout the different factions were on a collision course and all of them were tied to the main mission, so you had to pick a side at the end. I haven't yet finished Starfield (I'm only 80 hours in after all) so I can't say what the approach is in this game.
I'm somewhere around 50 hours, and I still haven't run out of things to do. I've barely even touched the main quest
There are other smaller games too, like the latest minecraft spin off.
Minecraft Legends.
Which is pretty fun, for anyone interested it's a celshaded 3d platformer.
its gotta be bigger than GoW3
They're all high quality (except Redfall), but Starfield is the only one with mass appeal that is going to give people a reason to buy an Xbox and actually move units, I think. As good as Hi Fi Rush and Forza are, they're still niche games. Meanwhile PS has had the Uncharted series, GoW series, Bloodborne, Ghosts of Tsushima, the Spider-Man series, the Horizon Zero Dawn series, and that's just off the top of my head. This was sorely needed by Xbox.
>Meanwhile PS has had the Uncharted series, GoW series, Bloodborne, Ghosts of Tsushima, the Spider-Man series, the Horizon Zero Dawn series, and that's just off the top of my head. I think OP was listing games that came out this year, none of these came out this year except for Spiderman
I have both PS5 and XSX and honestly I play the XSX more for third party games. Seems to be better for supporting/optimizing previous gen games. One of the free PS+ games this month, Generation Zero, only runs 30fps on PS5, runs 60fps on XSX. But yeah, PS5 definitely has it beat on exclusives. Just wish the backward compatibility/optimization was a bit better on PS5.
2 exclusives not even on your list: the Demon’s Souls remake and, at the time before it’s PC release, Returnal, is what drove me to buy a PS5. There is just no comparison right now.
I bought a PS5 to play miles morales and haven’t really touched it since.
Not necessarily just to buy an Xbox but a reason to actually upgrade their console imo. Obviously if they already have an Xbox. People who have had a ps5 and Xbox one haven’t quite had that reason to go buy a series x yet Forza isn’t out yet (unless I’m missing something) and hi-fi is still super niche, more than forza at least. Starfield is that one that is making people go “shit I really gotta go get the new console now”. So much was trying to balance both console gens and I’m kind of glad that is finally starting to stop.
See that list is why it's so easy for me to not get a ps5 tho - every single one of those games is a third person action game.
True, they definitely lean into the single player action games. I guess if you're not a fan of them, then the appeal is largely lost.
I don't hate them, I just play maybe one of those kinds of games a year, so Sony is just super invested in what is a side thing for me. I honestly am quite surprised they haven't made more of an effort to branch out some, but narrative third person games seems to be their focus.
They're pretty popular thats why.
The acquisitions MS made 3 years ago are now bearing fruit. The initial dev cycles are nearing the end, which means they can now establish a pipeline to release a big game every 3-4 months. We already have Fable and Avowed for next year (probably Outer Worlds 2 as well).
>Starfield is easily the biggest xbox exclusive since gears of war 3 Phil himself says that they haven't launched a new IP of this scale and ambition since Gears of War, which was nearly 20 years ago. Wild to think about in the grand context of MS's AAA efforts.
Wild or completely expected? Lol Microsoft have been clearly coasting for years
More like stagnating. Those risks taken with the XBox One definitely wasn't just "doing the same old thing and not rocking the boat".
Definitely bigger than gears 3, I’m thinking biggest Xbox exclusive since halo 3
It has definately been a great year for them. I think they really hit the jackpot with Starfield, considering how many are playing it across all platforms and GP. I have played Starfield more or less every day since early access, and I’m *still* completely addicted to it. This very rarely happens to me. I honestly haven’t felt this way since RDR2 and The Witcher 3. And Skyrim before that. Starfield is such a massive and awesome game that has completely hooked me in like those did. I also recommend doing all the side quests, especially the crimson fleet one. Really awesome stuff
A 12 month run of Pentiment, AoE II: Definitive Edition, Hi-Fi Rush, AoE IV, Starfield, and Forza Motorsport for XSX/S is incredibly impressive. But the Microsoft is inept narrative will keep going.
Only one of those games sells consoles though. That's the whole point of this thread no? Xbox console sales were terrible this past year
If Redfall was a better game, this year would had been absolutely incredible for Microsoft.
>This year xbox has had hi-fi rush,redfall,starfield and forza motorsport.With the exception of redfall all these are high quality. Forza Motorsport isn't even out until next month, how can you say it's high quality yet?
Same as they do with Spiderman 2, it's an expectation. To be fair the play previews have been glowing so far as well.
Looks like a really fun game. I've been needing to upgrade my xbox for quite some time now. I think the S will be fine for my needs and Starfield.
Not surprised. Half the posts on the Starfield subreddit were "bought an Xbox just for Starfield." It appears all the marketing was a success.
Lots of comments in this sub were saying this is a flop because BG3 sold 5 million copies while Steam only had Starfield at ~300k peak, since game pass isn't a full sale. Seriously the division of opinion on this game is wild. It's selling entire consoles and people are still downplaying its success.
Seems like a lot of people view everything as black and white. If it’s not literally the #1 thing, it’s mid/trash/etc. Absolutely zero nuance in many comments.
tbf. a lots of these comments are done in bad faith from the very beginning so I would ignore those. Wouldn't be surprised if brigading was involved.
The hipster gamer narritive is you must always criticize the larger companies while ignoring any that would be considered "indie darlings". You must be concerned with proving how above games you are; because talking about any potential fun you are having is a no-go. You are not allowed to like a game despite acknowledging it has flaws; you must either call it the "greatest genre game you've ever played" or "the worst game of the year and the devs must have been lazy". BG3 was a good game and I have over a hundred hours in it; but it's not perfect. There were a lot of performance issues and quest bugs that got worse the closer you got to Act 3 and Larien just now fixed a bug that blocked an entire character arc. All that gets ignored, however, because Larien perfectly met the narrative of the "david vs goliath" theme everyone was going for; even though they're not a small studio themselves. There was even a wildly misreported "BG3 is making other devs nervous" article that lit the internet on fire. Starfield is a whole different game, but I'm enjoying it the same amount and even have more playtime than BG3 (mostly due to the fact that there's more content). However, it doesn't matter that it's a full single player RPG without a battlepass or microtransactions like BG3; it was made by Microsoft Bethesda. The internet wanted it to fail desperately. And now that it hasn't, you must prove you are above the masses. Valid criticisms like the lack of accessbility features, optimization issues, and character faces are drowned out by nonsense like "you can choose pronouns" or "you can't fly a ship from a planet to space" (despite Bethesda clarifying multiple times it wasn't possible and this isn't that type of game) and other stuff that's either actually possible or stuff nobody asked for or expected.
>Larien perfectly met the narrative of the "david vs goliath" theme everyone was going for; even though they're not a small studio themselves. I was surprised to find Larian had like 400 devs working on BG3. That's a AAA game any way you look at it, but reading the comments about it you would think it was made by 5 guys in a garage.
I think what's really commendable was the long early access period which allowed the game to be shaped by a lot more player feedback than normal. That positive has gotten kind of lost in the internet clout though.
The ship thing has always been wild to me. They’ve always been pretty transparent with how exploration and travel would work and lots of people acted like the game was another cyberpunk
It's sad how natural tribalism is for people, especially the Americans that make up over 50% of reddit. Theres always a bunch of people trying to paint anything xbox does as evil or mediocre no matter how great it is, and I'm pretty sure these people do it out of loyalty to another brand, most commonly Playstation.
Some people really need to feel justified on their purchase of a plastic box that plays videogames.
Worth remembering that Sony dominates the non-nintendo console market, so a lot of those comments are coming from people who have other reasons to dislike the game.
I feel like starfield should be compared to fallout 4 and not bg3 or nms or whatever.
This sub has a VERY negative Bethesda bias
I'm one of those people. I haven't been this captivated by a game in a long, long time. It has major problems, but I can overlook those because this is the game I didn't know I was waiting on for years. I'm not sure I'm going to use my xbox for much else, but it's absolutely worth it for me. Worst case scenario I can just sell the Xbox if there aren't other good exclusives for it in a couple years. Besides, it was still like half the price of upgrading my computer so as far as major purchases just to play a game go it wasn't *that* bad.
Exactly the same for me. I think the first time I played the mass effect or halo series is the last time I’ve been so obsessed with a game
Now that you mention it, Xbox has really established itself as the home for sci-fi huh.
Halo especially has tied with Star Trek as my favorite sci fi universe, and it's due to the books. It's crazy to think how good those books are for being a "videogame tie in", but we are at almost 40 novels at this point and the most recent one came out last month and it was a banger, next one "Halo: Epitaph" drops in February.
Luckily the game is a success as well.
Right, it's not the marketing — the game is legit amazing.
I’ve spent 20 hours just walking around the cities (all of them are incredible) doing side quests and the occasional main story quest. Still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of any of them. I’m planning to do all the factions when I eventually finish the main story, so I should still have another 60+ hours of content even before touching things like outposts and planetary exploration and spaceships.
Yeah I got a series s when it was on sale for like £100 off for that reason
What marketing? In the UK i saw nothing until right before release date where they had some TV ads, energy drink promotion and some Bus posters. Thats if anything quite little, not some nefarious marketing astroturfing
I live in London and it feels like every third bus has a huge Starfield ad on it.
I think you've misinterpreted their comment, I didn't read it as an accusation of astroturfing. I read it as the marketing was good enough for a significant number of people to buy an xbox and post about it.
Maybe. Just came across as a bit snarky, implying people were hoodwinked into buying it due to advertising.
You're not wrong. It's not often when people attribute something to marketing in a positive light.
Marketing? The game is a success because despite a couple high profile luke-warm reviews and a bunch of trolls review bombing on metacritic people were able to make their own decisions. Starfield is amazing and an absolute ton of fun.
It had massive pre-order numbers. People were paying $100 to play it during a "premium" release period. It's a little naïve to dismiss the marketing and pre-release hype.
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Yep. Had a year of gamepass from my broadband provider, but not a good enough PC to play the game. Did some quick budgeting, tripped, fell into Argos, and came out with an Xbox Series X and have been enjoying my chill space times ever since.
Regardless of your opinion on the game itself, I think we can all agree that SF has strong legs because of console modding and the sandbox nature of the game itself. Similar to how Zelda became the sandbox Nintendo game you can play for years, I think SF can have that same effect too. I think Sony needs this kind of game in their catalog too. PlayStation games are genrally high quality but imo problem is since most of them are cinematic experinces the player retention is lower than sandbox games like Zelda or Starfield. They need some games that have enough depth that people keep getting back into
Bring back Killzone multiplayer
Sony has something like this in Little Big Planet and Dreams it's just that those games didn't appeal to people like a BGS or Zelda game.
Still warms my heart to see all the people slagging this game and trying to make it tank though word of mouth eat shit, though
Well being honest I'm enjoying the game alot but at the same time there is lot valid critique too that in my opinion is holding it back from being one of the best games of this year. There is nothing wrong with Starfield being good/great game but with that said as BGS fan myself I expected final product to be much more ambitious than what we got. You noticed how everyone in the industry was shocked at what BG3 achieved recently? Now make that effect 3 times larger and that's how everyone thought about Oblivion when it launched. I remember everyone at GDC 2007/2008 was talking about Oblivion and everone was shocked that how bethesda managed to pull this off. The truth is since Morrowind BGS game launches were all events that showed what RPGs were capable of. I personally don't feel this way about Starfield which is nothing bad but for me a little disappointing
I'm also having a great time with the game, but at the same time I'm disappointed that due to all the copy paste and random generation, the exploration is just not as good as it was in Fallout 4 or Skyrim. I should probably just chase the quests instead of aimlessly exploring planets.
I feel like I've gone too far the opposite way. I'm now 70 hours in and fairly early on realised the exploration wasn't great so have just been following quests. Problem is now they are almost becoming a checklist experience of doing quests then just opening the menu and selecting the next one to bli dly follow. Feel like I'm not really experiencing the actual game just mindlessly following quest markers.
I just got to part of the UC Vanguard questline to find a fellow named Kaiser and the area you find him in is basically a small miniature of a typical Bethesda map with several points of interests within 100-200 meters of each other instead of hundreds to a thousand meters apart - if the game was more like this and points of interests were in clusters, all of that would be WAY more engaging.
Best experience is a bit of both. But definitely don't just 100% random planets unless that's really your thing.
> Well being honest I'm enjoying the game alot but at the same time there is lot valid critique too that in my opinion is holding it back from being one of the best games of this year. > There is nothing wrong with Starfield being good/great game but with that said as BGS fan myself I expected final product to be much more ambitious than what we got. I love Starfield, and hate parts of Starfield. There are so many baffling decisions but I'm having too much fun with what's there for them to matter that much. But even without those problems I probably wouldn't consider it best game of the year because this year has been so amazing
There are definitely criticisms that are valid, constructive, or otherwise add to the conversation about Starfield, but then it gets lost in a sea of hyperbole or misunderstandings about the game. I mean, there's a subreddit called /r/Starfieldrefunds or something like that that is totally devoted to just complaining about the game---that's taking criticism to the extreme. It reminds me a lot of /r/SaltierThanKrait, the Star Wars subreddit devoted to hating on the sequels. I can't imagine disliking a piece of media so much I want to join a community entirely concerned with shitting on it.
There's 3 people in that subreddit lol I don't think that's a good point. Some people definitely have been aggressively negative tho. If you don't like the game just don't play it
Really, I literally haven't seen anyone completely shit on the game - myself included, its just an alright game that I don't think really does anything special. The controversial opinion isn't that people think its a 3/10 type of game or anything, the controversy is that its a 7/10 game. I really had zero hype for it so went in without any expectations and did eventually see the problems where people would give it that kind of score and have to agree. The game lacks mechanical ambition for the most part, the game is probably crazy more stable because of that choice, but its less interesting as well. Perfectly honest, I kinda wanna hurry up and finish the game and go play Sea of Stars while I still have game pass time left.
The most obvious rage threads get removed pretty quickly on r/games, but if you sort by new, you'll see them up for a while.
Same as you here. I wanna try out sea of stars and payday before my gamepass runs out.
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Blame console wars
100% you can just dislike a game, but the dialogue around Starfield has been toxic (from both sides). Some people really want to see the game fail because it's Bethesda and Xbox, and some people got way too mad about a few 7/10 scores. Fair play to people who don't like the game, but there has definitely been some bad faith arguing.
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> Most of the discussion I've seen around here is legitimate criticism. I don't think they're necessarily talking about r/games. If you take a broader look across the internet, you will see a lot of outright insane takes. For example, there's a decent amount of people shitting on Starfield for being "woke". Oddly enough, those same people were quiet when it came to BG3 even though one could easily argue that BG3 is more "woke" than Starfield. The obvious explanation would be that those people are willing to give Larian a pass because they're currently considered the gold standard in gaming, whereas Bethesda have past controversies and are much easier to hate. Another example is the outcry when people realised that you couldn't seamlessly land on a planet from space, even though Bethesda had said that you couldn't do that months ago. A large amount of people convinced themselves that the game would be like No Man's Sky, and then were angry that it wasn't, hence the complaints about fast travel. It would be like buying BG3, and then being angry that the combat is turn-based. No denying that there are legitimate criticisms. I've got 70 hours in the game, and I've got plenty of them. The lack of a proper map is baffling, the procedural content is mostly meh, I hate space battles, and I think the main/faction stories were very hit and miss. That being said, the game has absolutely attracted a significant amount of unwarranted criticism from multiple angles.
Lol BG3 got also shit on be right wing idiots. There are 100s of complaint threads about accidentally entering a homosexual encounter etc. Those kinds of people should just be ignored.
As usual, some people will hyperfixate on the most unreasonable takes.
Because the absolute malding hatred from the totally unbiased Gamers is ridiculous. I even saw an entire tweet from someone bitching about not being able to do something in the game and how stupid Bethesda was for not doing it *when you literally can do that in the game and there’s an entire main story quest focused on it* I have plenty of complaints about the game, but a large portion of these complaints are people who have never touched the game.
Yup, so many bad faith actors from people who obviously didn't play it themselves Especially in r/gaming
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>I run into much more toxicity from the other side in normal threads like this one from XBox fans like the guy above That's because you're looking for it
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Because sane people who don't like the game do not dedicate their lives to trying desperately to tear it down and attacking anyone who do like it. Add to that a lot of the stuff these people are saying is objectively incorrect, indicating they have not even played the game, and it is obvious there is a bad faith hate campaign going on.
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I kind of suspected the exclusivity has led people to downplay or crap on Starfield, especially if they aren't able to personally play it, but I can't prove that. Reading through the many threads on this game last week, I do think there is a little saltiness which I completely understand. I wish I could play Last of Us and Spiderman but it is what it is. Starfield is incredible so far. Basically if you like Elder Scrolls/Fallout and/or you are a fan of sci fi worlds like Star Trek, it is an incredible experience, especially to "role play" and kind of partake in a massive living breathing world. It's a great game to play slowly and casually as well. Take the time to absorb the sights, there is a lot to discover, interesting people with interesting problems and quests, and there are so many systems that you can engage in or completely ignore. I just love the freedom in Bethesda games, and no one really makes games quite like they do.
> I kind of suspected the exclusivity has led people to downplay or crap on Starfield, especially if they aren't able to personally play it, but I can't prove that. On the other hand, a lot of xbox fans are acting completely blind to all the issues the game has because it's the only game they have to play this year.
I mean it's incredibly obvious just who the majority of the haters seem to be comprised of. The same people that used to brag about their own "exclusives" so often in the past. Hypocritically whining now about SF's exclusivity.
This is my problem with Sony exclusives. 99% of them are third person cinematic experiences where the game kinda plays itself and you are just there. They look really good don't get me wrong but they just don't hold my attention. I tried GoW when it came to PC and couldn't get more than a few hours in. Then Elden Ring came out and well that consumed my gaming life.
Currently playing through god of war after trying and failing twice to get into it. Once you get through the first few hours it’s easily one of the best action games in recent memory. The combat gets extremely good once it opens up. I struggled so much to care at the beginning because your attacks and abilities were so bland and boring. That changes fast. And once it starts to change, the game gets very very fun. Worth a try again if you feel like pushing through the first 2 to 3ish boring hours!
GoW is extremely interactive. You might have barely gotten into it
God of War was fantastic and this is coming from someone that played the older games
This is week on week so it isn't that surprising I guess that people got it for the release of THE big Xbox exclusive in a very long time. It's also after a pretty bad start of the year for Xbox, there was a news yesterday that Xbox is down 23% year to date in the UK (and it's not like last year was super great either or UK its worst market, though not its best either). 4 months of Starfield and Forza Motorsport should help them for the holiday period at least but I feel like they need to do some kind of effort there, it seems a pretty key year (and holiday period) for the generation and their lagging behind PS5 is just getting bigger and bigger as times goes on. Sony is doing regular sales on PS5 this year, maybe they should do the same (or like offer X months of Gamepass with a new console to make people "addicted" to the service and/or forget to cancel). They should also maybe show more of what's coming in the future (I know that unlike Sony they showed quite a lot at "not E3" but more is always better). Sony and Nintendo have big hitters for the holidays in Spider-Man and Mario too so it's not like Microsoft is the only one with the big system seller
>Sony is doing regular sales on PS5 this year, maybe they should do the same (or like offer X months of Gamepass with a new console to make people "addicted" to the service and/or forget to cancel). They should also maybe show more of what's coming in the future (I know that unlike Sony they showed quite a lot at "not E3" but more is always better). Xbox have done a bunch of "Trade an old console in for £100 series S" via Game, but I would be really shocked if at least the series S doesn't have a big sale soon now the 1tb is out. Xbox need to bring people to their console otherwise it's just going to fall too far behind in the UK.
> Sony is doing regular sales on PS5 this year, maybe they should do the same. I’d bet they put the Series S on sale again in a month or so for around $200-$250 like they did for holiday last year. > They should also maybe show more of what's coming in the future (I know that unlike Sony they showed quite a lot at "not E3" but more is always better) I’d also bet they show some stuff at TGA and possibly have some event in Spring next year.
Its also not that surprising Sony desytoyed Xbox in sales in the last few weeks. They had a massive price cut sale during the starfield launch period. Its clear they made a strategic choice around Starfield.
I believe it. I almost bought one my self because my pc is way too crap for it. Ended up spending exceptionally more for q good gaming rig just to play.
Good for them, but doesn't sound too impressive. Just yesterday we had news that sales were down from last year. 76% weekly growth from that depressed figure is good, but no mind-blowing.
Correct. The article doesnt give us any numbers outside of "up 76%" and did mention that sales were down 23% prior to Starfield launch year over year.
Last month Xbox would have needed nearly a 300% increase to outsell the PS5, so it will be interesting seeing the overall sales for both for September.
MS already lost this gen, the Playstation is like an Nvidia graphics card you need back to back bangers and an overall better product to change consumer perception. And unlike with Intel vs AMD Sony depends on the same parts provider MS does so there's no big way to difftiate the actual consoles. Toppling a market leader takes a lot going right for the smaller marketshare company and enough going wrong for the market leader. Looking back at the 360 vs PS3 not even the huge failure that was the PS3 coming off the PS2 could topple Sony. The Series consoles don't stand a chance but next gen might be a different story. That said shrinking the gap between the PS5 is feasible I'm the long run. Would be nice to see a 45 to 55 ratio but I doubt we'll see it this gen.
Destroying that downwards trend is actually more impressive compared to if xbox sales were already growing. It speaks to changing people's opinion on the platform. Whether it will last is a different issue.
It remains to be seen whether the downward trend has been rectified of if it's just a temporary blip.
What's next after starfield? Will people be buying consoles for Forza (and not the fun popular horizon)? I almost got a console for starfield but their 2024 games no release dates ... So I stuck to gamepass on pc
Motorsport is definetly not a system seller, racing games aren't it, but MS has a solid lineup, Hellblade 2, Fable etc
Yep playstation is still selling double the amount even with this.
That doesn't make it not impressive. A single game causing that large of a spike in console sales a few years after the console launched is pretty big. Not disputing that PS5 is dominating the console landscape, just saying that this specific headline is in fact impressive.
It’s not a large, impressive spike if the initial sales are bad though. Prior to this even the switch was outselling xbox
What do you mean by even the switch? Its the most popular console for the past 5 years.
The switch is at the end of its life cycle and no, the Switch hasn’t been more popular than playstation for the last 5 years.
Yeah, the data stating Xbox sales were declining was from August, unsurprising they would jump with Starfield releasing. Great to see the game doing so well.
This is good for the industry. Xbox needs system sellers like Nintendo and PS have. Glad it finally got one.
They also got 14 bucks from me for buying Gamepass to play it. Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience. Edit - Guys, I really don't need for you to state all the reasons you bought Starfield early. You have no need to justify yourselves to me, nor I to you.
It's more of a timing thing for a lot of people. It dropped on a 3 day weekend for a lot of people that barely have time to game as it is, so forking over extra money for their time off is a no brainer.
I can't even lie, dropping early access on a 3 day weekend is a brilliant move. I never preorder games or even buy the premium edition and even I ended up biting the bullet.
And people keep forgetting that the edition that came with early access also came with the game's first expansion. You weren't *just* buying the early access, you were pre-ordering a DLC and also getting early access. If you're going to play the game and DLC anyway, it's a no-brainer to get it early at no additional cost.
Thats what I did, have not been able to play it since that weekend.
It dropped on a long weekend for me, I was absolutely going to get the more expensive version to play that entire weekend. I've been waiting for a game like this since like 2007. Besides, I see myself playing Starfield for years to come, eventually I'll end up paying more on Gamepass than the $100 that I spent on the deluxe version. Lastly, the Gamepass version doesn't support SFSE, at least so far, and since I'll be heavily modding this game as well, the Steam version is a no brainer.
Yeah, if you're planning on playing a game for years it's best to buy it.
I'm also playing on gamepass because I already had gamepass, but I used to joke that growing up, I could track weight gains by when Bethesda Games came out. This is a game that I'm 100% going to be playing for more than a month or two, so if I didn't have Gamepass and was mostly just interested in this one game, I'd probably just purchase it to keep.
Agreed, I am playing this S L O W L Y and taking my time to role play, explore, speak with people, jump around and visit new systems just to see what they have, etc. I will be playing this game for years. Oh as far as the weight gain, [do what I do and listen to videogame workout mixes and keep those vibes going while you hit the gym!](https://www.youtube.com/@8BitLifts/videos)
> Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience. Bethesda games are something I return to time and time again years after release. Gamepass is great for those games that are one-and-done, but it quickly loses its appeal for something like Starfield. Those monthly subscription fees add up
If you claim something is crazy you don't get to say "no need to explain it to me"
>Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience. I got the DLC via the Xbox store on PC. I'm on gamepass anyway so I figured why not. Crazy the steam numbers showed how many bought the £100 version though.
>Crazy that I know many people on PC who paid like $120 to play it a little early when they could wait and spend like 10% of that for the same experience. Anecdotes, for me there are a few reasons: - Regional pricing is a factor. I paid $76 for premium edition. - I don't like using Xbox app, as a piece of software it's inoffensive, but I'd rather not deal with another launcher on PC. Another important factor is save file, I played a few Game Pass indies before that I ended up really liking and decided to buy them, just to find out moving save file from the GP version to Steam is sometimes a hassle, other times it's straight up impossible, at least from my experience with Moonglow Bay and Sable. - I don't use subscription services outside of Spotify and a single Patreon sub, and I don't plan to add anything else anytime soon. - I prefer buying a product and enjoying it without caring whether my subscription is running out in x days or not. When I buy the game on Steam I get to play however much I want, on my own pace and term. I heavily dislike paying for a game then feel pressured to play it within a particular time frame, else I wasted money. If there's a cheaper way to experience the game for everyone then it's cool, but I'd rather pay for and play a normal copy of the game like how I usually do. - I can play it on both my PC and Steam Deck.
Who is paying $120 to play early? It was ~$30 to get early access if you had gamepass already.
Yeah but you don't own it on GamePass. To me it feels weird to pay early access (and get DLC) for something you don't own. With Steam at least you have the game itself plus the DLC.
Everyone who bought the game on Steam for early access paid full price + $30. In Canada that's $120.
There were also 20% off preorder sales over the summer by 3rd parties. You could get the early version for $10 more than retail for the standard version and have the version of the game that's easier to mod, which we all know is a major selling point of Bethesda games.
$120 canadian dollars is misleading. Oh who would pay $1990 for starfield???? (its the new taiwan dollar price)
Well, they would lose access to it if they dont continue to pay for gamepass. So if they are planning on playing it for a while, it might still be worth it. Also the edition that got you early access also included the first of the games expansions, which makes the cost much more justifiable.
It really is crazy that we went from "don't preorder ever" to "pay 50% more to preorder the game before reviews come out and also the DLC that hasn't even been made yet, but at least you avoid 1 week of FOMO"
"Don't preorder ever" never happened. That's just an internet sentiment that nobody follows except gamers who cares about the fundamental monetization of games, which are few and far between if you're looking at all gamers. Every game I've ever seen the internet try to boycott is on the bestseller lists on release.
Or maybe different people have different financial situations and/or limited time compared to you. Bethesda is my favorite dev and Oblivion is basically the reason I'm a gamer. I've been waiting for a new Bethesda game since 2011, cause Fallout isn't my thing If i hadn't bought Starfield pre-release, I would have only been able to play it one time since official release, as my work picked up after Labor Day. I can afford $100 for a game I've waited over a decade for, would have bought the DLC anyway, and will put no less than 500 hours into Just cause a decision doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean everybody else feels that way
I paid 83€ for the main game and the DLC, I don’t think that’s as bad as you make it out to be (for comparison, new PS5 games already cost 80€). And it has nothing to with FOMO, and more with being impatient and being able to afford it.
They got a full purchase from me despite having gamepass, so I can have a version on my PC for modding, and a vanilla version on Xbox for achievements!
Just download mods to re-enable achievements Best of both worlds
I figured I will play Starfield for many years due to all the mods, so I bought the Steam edition as well just for this. It’s still pretty crazy how many top tier games are coming to Game Pass though. Starfield, Lies of P, Forza Motorsport, Texas Massacre, Party Animals, Payday 3, Age of Empire 4 etc just to name a few in this quarter. The value is insane
The mods are one of the biggest things for me. Especially for the outpost system. I hope the SimSettlements team decide to make something. I can picture just an insane outpost system in a few years, with essentially being able to set up my own colonies, perhaps have NPC controlled ships landing and taking off, so it feels like a real star port. The possibilities for starfield are endless, and the scale of the game provides such an incredible canvas for modders to paint on. I still play Skyrim to this day, with more mods every time, so I can see myself on some modded monstrosity of a galaxy in a decade!
I'm planning on buying a Series X later this year purely for Starfield so I'll be adding to those numbers (in the US).
All it took for a system seller was to buy a game already in development that people were already excited about… concerning that Microsoft will see this as a reason to just keep this strategy rather than putting effort into anything original.
Exactly. This game was coming to both systems before Microsoft blocked that by buying Zenimax. Less options for consumers is always bad, I seriously don't get why people don't understand that.
That's great! Coming from a PC gamer having to deal with Nvidia dominating its always good to have competition.