While we’d argue it never really achieved its intergalactic expectations, Starfield is undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of the generation.
You may recall, Microsoft announced its acquisition of Bethesda prior to the release of the PS5.
At the time, Sony had sewn up timed exclusivity on titles like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo, but behind-the-scenes it was trying to lock down Starfield as well.
That motivated the Redmond firm to take action, and it bought the entire publisher, eventually tying auteur Todd Howard’s new title down as a console exclusive.
It was Microsoft’s big bet, and when it released into Game Pass in 2023, we daresay a lot was riding on it. The company called it “one of the most important RPGs ever made”.
But it failed to really move the needle for Xbox, fell short of sales expectations, and didn’t really attract all that much critical acclaim. This, along with its acquisition of Activision, eventually pushed Xbox into its current multiplatform path.
Now, in the hours after its PS5 announcement, Howard has said he “always” wanted the game to be on Sony’s console anyway.
He told IGN:
“We’ve always wanted to do it. I would say that we have a great relationship with PlayStation. We’ve been there for a long time with our games. So, I think with this one, we knew it would be a matter of time.
We’ve been working on it for a while, so we still maintained a close relationship. We’re still shipping a lot on PlayStation. People forget with Fallout 76 and its other updates and Skyrim – we had still been doing a lot of PlayStation work, even though Starfield wasn’t there. So we’re just excited to get it out there, to the audience.”
It’ll be interesting to see how PS5 owners respond to Starfield, because while it’s not a bad game by any stretch, it doesn’t have the enthusiasm of a Fallout 4 or The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim behind it.
The new DLC and improvements should help, and to be fair to Bethesda, it’s only charging $50 for the base game. (The full package will cost $70, and that gets you absolutely everything available so far.)
We’ll be keeping a close eye on pre-order rankings, trailer views, and even engagement on this site to give us an idea of how this is going to do.
There’s certainly a larger addressable market on PS5 than there was on Xbox Series X|S, but is this port simply arriving too late to make an impact at this stage? We’ll find out on 7th April.
