Bethesda has officially announced the new preload dates for Starfield.
On Twitter, Bethesda has stated:
“#Starfield has gone gold! Preloads begin tomorrow for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC and August 30 for Steam.”
Microsoft clearly understands the obligation they have to make things good for their fans, which they can do with this game. So, Starfield’s preloads are being made available for Xbox account users nearly immediately, on Windows and Xbox Series X|S. If you pre-ordered the game via Steam, you then have to wait a little bit longer close to launch.
This doesn’t materially affect your ability to play the game. Of course, it does make it much more convenient for Xbox account users, whether they’re playing on PC or Xbox Series consoles. They will get to prepare their downloads well in advance.
Not everyone will want to make an Xbox account for one game, so the Steam version would be for them. We don’t know if there are so many Steam users playing the game that it might lead to an overload, but they do still have over a week to do it. Really, it’s the people who get Early Access or streaming keys that will have to rush to download their versions by September 1.
On the side, it’s an interesting choice for the studio to take this long to go gold. It may be possible that Bethesda Game Studios had put enough into the game already that they could have declared this much earlier, possibly a few months ago. It hints that Bethesda had gone the extra mile and put as much work in as possible to put into the game, so that they could have it go gold at the last moment.
The upside to that would be, if there were things that could have been improved, Bethesda did not delay working on them well until after launch. Hopefully, that also means that they will deliver an optimal experience on launch day.
Bethesda, as critically acclaimed and as important to the industry as they are, do have a reputation. They’re known for their games not being at their best at launch, and this has been true for some time for multiplatform, AAA releases. With everything that’s different with the production of Starfield, this might be the one time that Bethesda gets it all right the first time.
Starfield releases on September 6, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S, and on Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
