We will be talking a lot about our upcoming action-RPG in science fiction. Starfield In 2023.
Microsoft is banking on it to be the next big “killer app” for the Xbox platform. It’s also in an interesting position where it’s both an important release for Microsoft and a potential participant in a major setback for the company.
Here’s what’s useful to know about the hype around the game, and why Starfield Microsoft may use it against Activision Blizzard in its bid of $68 Billion to purchase Activision Blizzard.
Possible game-changer
Starfield is a spiritual follow-up to 2011’s Skyrim: The Elder Scrolls V, it is one the top-selling video games. Its director, Todd Howard, described Starfield as “Skyrim in space” in an interview with The Washington Post
Skyrim’s overall importance to gaming is hard to understate. It’s sold more than 30 million copies to date, is available on every modern console, has a thriving mod community to this day, and has generated running jokes that are widespread enough to have their own Wikipedia page.
You might like Skyrim, Starfield This sprawling open-ended RPG allows you to explore the vast game world and make whatever enemies or friends you like. It’s not like other RPGs. Skyrim, Starfield Science Fiction Game that places you in the position of an 24th century space explorer.
Starfield takes place in the Settled Systems, which extends for 50 light years away from Sol, after a period of space exploration that’s been extrapolated from current 21st-century technologies. You’re the newest member of Constellation, an order of explorers, which is on the hunt for a series of alien artifacts. Like other open-world Bethesda games, however, you’re free to ignore the game’s main plot in favor of unguided exploration, bounty hunting, or joining other organizations such as pirate fleets.
Starfield Bethesda Game Studios’ next major project is “The Next Big Project”, based in Rockville (Md.). It became part of Microsoft’s Xbox network in 2020 when it acquired ZeniMax Media, its parent company. Starfield is the company’s first internally-developed original IP in more than 25 years.
The key word there is “internally,” incidentally. Bethesda Game Studios primarily works on games that are in the Elder Scrolls And Fallout series since it was spun off into its own division in 2001; its first project as Bethesda Game Studios was 2003’s Elder Scrolls III – Morrowind. Bethesda, before then was fully in. Elder Scrolls occasionally licensed games. Bethesda Softworks, the same company’s publishing arm, last released a new IP, Ghostwire: Tokyo, In March 2022.
Bethesda was originally announced Starfield In 2018. After the Microsoft acquisition in June 2021 it was again revealed as one of the future tentpoles for the Xbox line-up, and the first major Bethesda game that would be exclusive to the Xbox.
If Starfield Even better? Good It could become a major game changer for Xbox in 2023. It’s the effective successor to a wildly popular game, and one of the first big RPGs of the ninth generation of gaming consoles. That’s the sort of thing that sells Game Pass subscriptions, and maybe even Xbox hardware.
There are other implications
Starfield has also ended up as a controversial plank in Microsoft’s ongoing battle with the FTC.
Microsoft’s definition of an “Xbox exclusive” is looser than that of other console publishers. Starfield, Similar to Halo Infinite, will be made available via Valve Software’s digital storefront Steam, which is at least nominally a competitor to the Microsoft Store.
However, Microsoft’s current plan with Starfield has been repeatedly used as a rhetorical tool against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Bethesda had planned to make Starfield It was initially announced cross-platform, but it became part Xbox Game Studios in 2018. The game was then re-announced by Microsoft as an Xbox Exclusive.
This decision by Xbox turned out to be a problem for its negotiations with American and European organizations. Microsoft would have been willing to do that with Starfield, regulators have argued, there’s nothing preventing it from doing that again with future blockbusters such as a new Duty Call game.
However Starfield doesn’t have a firm release date yet, it’s planned to ship as an exclusive for Windows PCs and Xbox at some point in the first half of 2023. Like most games from Microsoft’s internal development network Xbox Game Studios, Starfield Xbox Game Pass will be available for purchase at launch.
