Oh, Phil Spencer, what won’t you say next? We ask this because, true to his nature, he’s been making plenty of bold claims and statements about the future of Xbox, including going backward on things he said not too long ago. But his focus today is on Starfield, which came out a few months back after YEARS of development by Bethesda. While the title rocketed off to a hot start, pun intended, things cooled off quickly once people dove into the game and learned more about it. But at the CCXP show in Brazil, as noted by PCGamesN, Spencer was there to say that he felt the game could have the longevity of a certain other Bethesda title.
Specifically, he thinks Starfield could have the “staying power” of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
“That’s our goal. Skyrim is such an amazing hit from Bethesda Game Studios, and talking to Todd Howard and the team what they wanted to do as people who love space and space exploration is give them that same opportunity [as Skyrim]. So we’ve already announced that we’ve got our next expansion coming, Shattered Space. We’ve already told the community that they’ll get all the modules that they need, so they can go and create their own content in Starfield, which has been so important to Skyrim. So a ton of confidence that for many, many years, Starfield sitting very high in the gameplay.”
So, yeah, classic Phil Spencer. He dolls something up while kind of ignoring the truth that is in front of him. For example, he noted at that same event that Bethesda’s latest title has 12 million players, which is impressive. However, that number comes from players getting it via Xbox Game Pass, so the game hasn’t SOLD that many units; it’s just been played by that many people. That’s a big difference.
Second, while it’s nice to think that an expansive title like this could last for over a decade with players, the people who have actually been playing the game haven’t been as positive about it as he has. You might have heard that the Steam page for the game has gotten lower and lower in its review rating since its launch. It got so bad that Bethesda started to reply to reviews to “tell people why they were wrong” about not liking Starfield.
Skyrim never had that problem. It didn’t have that problem so much that Bethesda ensured that it was on EVERY system possible for a couple of console generations to ensure people could keep playing it. We’re not sure that’ll happen here with Starfield.
