Tuesday, June 13th 2023
Starfield PC System Requirements Revealed, Stuck at 30 FPS on Xbox
Bethesda has unveiled the first gameplay trailer for Starfield during the Starfield Direct after the Xbox Games Showcase yesterday, showing some impressive graphics from this upcoming sci-fi RPG. Shortly after, we got the confirmation from the Game Director, Todd Howard, that the game will actually be locked at 30 FPS, which does not sounds surprising, especially after the full PC system requirements got revealed.
Bethesda has put a lot of effort into Starfield, and it shows it the seen trailer. The team is also claiming that this game will have "the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped," according to an interview that the Xbox Game Studios Head, Matt Booty, gave to Giant Bomb. He also added that there are a lot of people internally playing Starfield, and Phil Spencer, head of Xbox Games Studio, told the same outfit that the game had a much earlier release date, and was delayed twice, so hopefully we'll have a solid game at launch. Unfortunately, Todd Howard, also confirmed that the game will run at full 4K on the Xbox Series X and at 1440p on the Xbox Series S, but will be locked at 30 FPS on both consoles.
The first PC system requirements for the game have been posted over at the official Steam page, and while minimum system requirements do not sound that bad, an SSD requirement does raise a lot of questions. The minimum requirements include an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i7-6800K CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 5700 or an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card. The recommended list raises those to an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or an Intel Core i5-10600K CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. As noted, you'll also need 125 GB of SSD storage space.
Hopefully, we will hear a clarification from Bethesda about these PC system requirements soon.
Sources:
Bethesda Starfield, Giant Bomb (Youtube)
Bethesda has put a lot of effort into Starfield, and it shows it the seen trailer. The team is also claiming that this game will have "the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped," according to an interview that the Xbox Game Studios Head, Matt Booty, gave to Giant Bomb. He also added that there are a lot of people internally playing Starfield, and Phil Spencer, head of Xbox Games Studio, told the same outfit that the game had a much earlier release date, and was delayed twice, so hopefully we'll have a solid game at launch. Unfortunately, Todd Howard, also confirmed that the game will run at full 4K on the Xbox Series X and at 1440p on the Xbox Series S, but will be locked at 30 FPS on both consoles.
51 Comments on Starfield PC System Requirements Revealed, Stuck at 30 FPS on Xbox
Phil Spencer, head of Xbox Games Studio, told the same outfit that the game had a much earlier release date, and was delayed twice, so hopefully we'll have a solid game at launch.
These two sentences make me so happy.
It means that Zenimax absolutely would have rushed the game out in a cut-down, incomplete and broken state months or possibly even years too early, and Microsoft has quality standards that will hopefully result in this being the first non-shitshow Bethesda launch in almost two decades.
As for Xbox I would've preferred if they can at least add a 40fps mode, it makes huge difference compared to 30fps.
Sunk cost fallacy at this point with the Creation Engine.
Come on! This thing is literally on life support.:fear:
Realistically, the 1070Ti is a very close match to the 5600XT but I suspect 6GB won't cut it, so the 5700 is the first AMD GPU that is both powerful enough AND has 8GB VRAM.
As for the 6800XT being alongside the 2080, I'm guessing that the higher settings will be heavy on hardware raytracing, where the 6800XT loses a lot of its advantage, though it's still 15% faster than the RTX 2080 at 1080p
They ain't fixing shit here, all they do is use newer hardware to keep it going and add more crap on top. That's how you get those massive framedrops in FO4 city center - the engine cannot handle the number of assets in that area well. They don't fix it. They just release a game with abysmal performance. That's why you get 30 FPS limitations here. Its a great way to hide that immense framedrop.
Fun fact, they didn't even manage 30 FPS with FO4 on consoles. 25 FPS was common, and if particle effects happen close to you, you get a slideshow. As if it's 1999.
FO3 was overloaded as well, 2GB limit basically meant no end to the game's problems. 4GB patch fixes most of them.
You're right its quite normal to overhaul and refresh the same engine, they call that iterative refinements, but Bethesda isn't refining it, they're just making sure the Creation ship doesn't sink and leave the bugfixing to the community.
if its a 60 fps cap on PC count me disappointed. a game like this would be gorgeous in high refresh.this is unfortunate... i will def wait for starfield to be on deep discount and play it on steam deck 2 OLED that comes out in 2-3 years. if its capped at 60 fps anyway. if its not capped i will play it on my dream rig i intend to build next year.
I remember when Oblivion was released and later the Unofficial Patch came from the modding community that fixed over 5,000 bugs iirc. I tried to play some of the game before the patch and encountered bizarre bugs like boulders floating in midair and cows that would fly up into the sky and then disappear.
A new UI, higher res and better gunplay cannot hide what's underneath. At the same time, I think Bethesda knows this, its why they show us all the similarities too in skill trees/progression systems, base building and whatnot. They know they don't have to sell the best running graphically top notch game, they know they need to deliver a new sandbox, and whether that is bug infested or not is secondary. Look at the focus on base building and that freighter you're putting together. They also take an effort to show players how cool they can play, with jetpacks and kill shots.
Its not all bad though, seeing a game's trailer focused on actual gameplay. I have to admit even I have small hype belly fire from it, despite knowing it'll likely be a clusterfk on release. But the setting definitely clicks, this is likely a much more fun rendition of what we imagine Star Citizen to do.
I agree though, the presented game systems do look promising. Ultimately we will see if Bethesda can continue to justify the use of this engine.
That said, it's possible that Bethesda sees modding as a potential risk, but I'm leaning more towards the familiarity argument. Core dev team seems to have been around a while. A lot of the names in Fallout 4 credits were also there in Oblivion and FO3. It would probably be a safe bet that everything from management to lunch break jokes revolves around how the existing engine works.
If that's the case, switching engines wouldn't just mean paying for licensing/development of the replacement, it would mean throwing away the entire studio and starting from scratch.
Apparently with ES6.