We seem to have good reason to believe that Starfield will be the least buggy game at launch from Bethesda, in the history of the company.
As reported by Insider Gaming, no less than Matt Booty, Microsoft Game Studios’ head, made this claim. These are Matt’s exact words from a GiantBomb stream:
“Working with Todd and the team, I see bug counts and, just by the numbers, if it shipped today, this would have the fewest bugs any Bethesda game ever shipped with.”
Insider Gaming attempted to corroborate this statement this early. Consider that Microsoft made special arrangement for game previews and reviews because of the scope of the game. As of this writing, Starfield is not yet on Early Access. Many individuals were given review codes but are officially under NDA.
Insider Gaming first took note of a message from journalist Tyler McVicker, who went onto Discord and stated “15 hours in and not a single bug”. Insider Gaming also spoke with five different people who are also playing the game. Most of them only saw one or two bugs at most. They also pointed out that they saw the bugs listed in Starfield’s Day One Patch.
We should be able to clearly corroborate just how buggy or not buggy Starfield is when it launches. It is generally a matter of public record that Bethesda’s track record has always been that all their releases right until now would get notorious for the number and severity of their game’s bugs when they come up at launch. In fact, there is a literal WatchMojo list for it, which you can read right here.
So do we have any good reason to believe Matt Booty claiming that Bethesda has managed to get ahead of Starfield having a messy, buggy launch? Possibly. The big difference between all those other games, that we have seen released in the past two decades, and now, is being bought by Microsoft.
Bethesda under Microsoft does not have to make all their games for all platforms anymore, though they do seem to still be making most games multiplatform. In the case of Starfield, trimming down the platforms to two enables them to optimize to the least number of platforms that they have to. That also gives them the opportunity to make the game the best they can be on all platforms.
Starfield will be releasing on September 6, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
