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Todd Howard has confirmed that the upcoming Starfield may be packed with a galaxy’s worth of stuff to do, but it’ll be locked to a 30FPS framerate on Xbox Series X|S consoles.
Howard revealed the news in an interview with IGN shortly after last night’s Starfield Direct broadcast. “I think it’ll come as no surprise, given our previous games, what we go for are these huge open worlds, hyper-detailed and where anything can happen and we do want to do that – it’s 4K on the (Xbox Series) X and 1440p on the S. We do lock it at 30, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff, we don’t want to sacrifice any of it.”
“Fortunately with this one, we’ve got it running great. It’s often running way above that, sometimes at 60, but on the consoles we do lock it because we prefer the consistency, where you’re not even thinking about it and we don’t ever want to sacrifice that experience that makes our games feel really, really special. So it feels great, we’re really happy with how it feels even in the heat of battle. We need that headroom, because, you know, in our games – anything can happen.”
The news hasn’t gone down well with everyone on the Starfield subreddit, particularly with Redfall still fresh in the mind for many. Ravenorse says “Having the most anticipated new exclusive locked to last gen’s frame rate is a bad look. It’s hard to go back to 30’s choppiness after you’ve enjoyed 60+ for a while,” and said “It gives Xbox and Bethesda the appearance of being tone deaf.”
There’s another common thread with many of the comments too, lamenting their expensive current gen consoles over a PC. “The Series X was not cheap,” says NiceColdPint, “and it’d be nice to be able to use it to the fullest extent if the comment about parity between Series S|X is true.” Dowdy61, meanwhile, was a lot more frustrated – “This is actually a f*****g joke dude. I upgraded to next gen because of faster frame rate. What a god damn let down.”
In fact, some are even calling for an Xbox hardware refresh – such as FrixEd who says “Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘next gen’ consoles are simply outdated. We can’t have this generation wager between 60FPS and small/empty cities or 30 FPS but more lifelike experience. We definitely need an Series X 2.”
Of course, there’s still plenty of people who are disappointed, but expected this news – given the game’s scope, and point out that framerate isn’t everything. “Starfield will be perfectly fine,” says giulianosse. “Tears of the Kingdom is living proof you don’t need cutting edge graphics or performance if you manage to deliver a bombshell of a game.” – a thread similar to our recent argument that Tears of the Kingdom proves graphics don’t really matter.
Regardless, it’s sure to be a debate that’ll rage right up until Starfield’s release date this September and well beyond. We got a nice long look at the game last night during the Starfield Direct, where we also learned Starfield is completely overhauling combat from previous Bethesda RPGs.
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