Starfield was delayed partly because Xbox has "experienced shipping games too early"

[John Elden Ring]

Xbox boss Phil Spencer said delaying Starfield was "just the right thing to do"​

Talking to The Verge for its Decoder podcast, Spencer said, "We have experience shipping games too early, but in hindsight when you look at a game like Starfield, which has taken so long and so much investment in new IP from the team, the decision to give the team the time to build the game that they feel they should be building is just the right thing to do."

Spencer explained that, while the financial impact of those decisions was obviously taken into consideration, "Starfield and Redfall, which are our first big Xbox games with ZeniMax coming into the team, I just wanted to make sure those teams felt that they had the support they could get from Xbox. Maybe feel some of the benefit of being part of a larger organization that has other revenue streams and other things going on that could be helpful."

The announcement of Starfield's delay wasn't a huge surprise. As Rich Stanton pointed out at the time, "The game is apparently an expansive and huge new IP that supposedly marks a huge technological leap, but six months away from release we hadn't seen anything." That said, Chris Livingston wasn't expecting the news and said he would have bet money on Starfield making its announced date, though admittedly, "Not a lot of money. Some money. Like, $28." Spencer, who has been at Microsoft for 34 years now with credits going back to the fondly CD-ROM encyclopedia Encarta before he became the official Xbox guy, suggested he wasn't shocked by the need for a delay.

I, as somebody who has seen a few county fairs here, might get some gut instinct about where we are," Spencer said, "just in the way the teams are talking about their game, where we are in playing builds. But you want teams to feel like they own their dates. It's one of the things that, when teams feel like they own their own destiny with their games, they deliver better. So you wait for the real signal from the creative teams and production teams.

 

[peter42O]

Very happy that this is Spencer's approach. I don't care what game it is, if it's not ready, delay it. I don't want a good game that has issues and needs multiple updates to fix when I could potentially get the same game in a great state that has minimal issues and doesn't need any updates to fix and make the game playable.

 

[Darth Vader]

"We have experience shipping games too early, but in hindsight when you look at a game like Starfield, which has taken so long and so much investment in new IP from the team, the decision to give the team the time to build the game that they feel they should be building is just the right thing to do."

I agree with this. Games should be shipped when ready

Spencer explained that, while the financial impact of those decisions was obviously taken into consideration

This is bullshit. If they had any consideration for the financial impact, they would have kept developing the Playstation version, which would, as per usual, be one the best selling console version.

"The game is apparently an expansive and huge new IP that supposedly marks a huge technological leap, but six months away from release we hadn't seen anything."

From what we've seen, this is a No Mans Sky clone which will include your usual Bethesda lore, storytelling and RPG elements. They are usually great, that's not the point, but this won't be a technological leap. If we go by the trailer, it looks absolutely awful and is clearly rooted to the same old engine they've been using for 2 decades now.

 

[Dr Bass]

Yeah people who worked on it, who leaked info early, said they were still trying to "find the fun" a few months before it was supposed to be released. Nothing they showed represented a "huge technological leap", and we know it's built on an old engine apparently held together with duct tape.

This is all just more hot air until proven otherwise. Put up, or shut up, Phil.

 

[Hezekiah]

I bet Tom Warren must have been sweating like a dog in heat when he saw Phil's chiseled frame stroll into the Verge's offices.

 

[Loy310]

I have zero faith in bethesda

 

[Darth Vader]

Yeah people who worked on it, who leaked info early, said they were still trying to "find the fun" a few months before it was supposed to be released. Nothing they showed represented a "huge technological leap", and we know it's built on an old engine apparently held together with duct tape.

This is all just more hot air until proven otherwise. Put up, or shut up, Phil.

I've been saying for years that Bethesda needs to set up a team to create a new generation engine. Engines take years, so if they don't have one, it's a huge flaw from their leadership to not properly invest in it. Their engine has the caveat that it's pretty much unique in what it allows to do from an RPG standpoint, but it's gone through so much patch work that I highly doubt they have developers that understand it's core foundation. It's probably an absolute chore to work with, with a lot of subsystems duct taped together, and it's cracks show when Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 have bugs from the Morrowind era.

From an efficiency standpoint it's a no brainer.

 

[PropellerEar]

I've been saying for years that Bethesda needs to set up a team to create a new generation engine.

I think they should use the synergies inside the Xbox Game Studios and take the brand new next gen SpitRoast engine from 343i for all the games.

 

[ethomaz]

I think to be fair with MS this game should not put in the same basket than others MS projects... it is a Bestelda game being developed for years and so any manage issue should be related to own Bestelda and not MS.

Said that MS has (as showed in several first-party projects) a pipeline issue... it is manage issue? technical issue? I don't know... but you can't take so much time working in a game to show it like Halo Infinite was showed. Tracing comparison it is probably the same issues Square Enix had with FFXVIII Versus that become years late a dup tapped FFXV.

I mean something is wrong when you works for several years and what you show is still lacking.

Of course the best decision is delay to try to use bandaid for another year to fix the most glaring issues.
But imo something is wrong in that development process. Maybe the exceptions in recent years are the teams that uses the same engine/game every interaction like Turn 10 and Playground.

MS has a lot work to manage and fix to make their studios become stable with game development and so finally use most of time to polish their games instead to try to bandaid issues.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I won't be surprised if (or when) it is soft-delayed again to H2 2023. If they "didn't see anything" six months prior to the original release date, I don't know how you have enough time for much to "see" nine months post the original date, to make a H1 2023 release date.

Even if they do, if Forza Motorsport and RedFall are in fact coming H1 2023, and there's a strong chance Avowed and/or Hellblade 2 don't make it 2023, it would serve MS best to hold on to Starfield for Fall 2023. Have a big game for the holiday season to balance out your output for the year.

 

[ethomaz]

I won't be surprised if (or when) it is soft-delayed again to H2 2023. If they "didn't see anything" six months prior to the original release date, I don't know how you have enough time for much to "see" nine months post the original date, to make a H1 2023 release date.

Even if they do, if Forza Motorsport and RedFall are in fact coming H1 2023, and there's a strong chance Avowed and/or Hellblade 2 don't make it 2023, it would serve MS best to hold on to Starfield for Fall 2023. Have a big game for the holiday season to balance out your output for the year.

I don't it was ever suppose to be release in first-half 2023 after the delay.
It is holiday launch... 2022 and now 2023.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I don't it was ever suppose to be release in first-half 2023 after the delay.
It is holiday launch... 2022 and now 2023.

Yeah but MS won't come out and say that it's a Holiday 2023 game until we're near the next showcase and they announce the new date. Only next time, they'll just skip over the fact it's a delay.

If they were smart, they'll state it's to coincide with Skyrim's 11th anniversary, so you can market it like: 11/11/11/23 or something like that. Play up on it being sci-fi with some weird-ass calendar date or such.

Guess we'll see what happens.

 

[Gediminas]

for sure they didn't announce it before deal with ATB is final.

 

[peter42O]

I won't be surprised if (or when) it is soft-delayed again to H2 2023. If they "didn't see anything" six months prior to the original release date, I don't know how you have enough time for much to "see" nine months post the original date, to make a H1 2023 release date.

Even if they do, if Forza Motorsport and RedFall are in fact coming H1 2023, and there's a strong chance Avowed and/or Hellblade 2 don't make it 2023, it would serve MS best to hold on to Starfield for Fall 2023. Have a big game for the holiday season to balance out your output for the year.

I think Starfield gets delayed to November 2023 but with the first half looking like Redfall, Ghostwire Tokyo port, Forza Motorsport, a few third party console exclusives like Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and a bunch of day one Game Pass games like Wo Long, Atomic Heart and others, they don't need Starfield in the first half of 2023. And if they don't have a Fall/Holiday 2023 exclusive ready, then pushing Starfield to November 2023 is the better move.

 

[thelastword]

Personally, I don't see where the hype comes from for this game, same for Redfall, the marketing and hype machine for MS games is just insane, but the results are always way below those expectations. Starfield is no less hyped than Star Citizen, Evolve, Anthem etc.......As for MS. everything is hyped, even the Medium was hyped, Halo infinite was hyped, Fable was hyped, Avowed is hyped.

When I looked at MS's Starfield presentation, I saw nothing that's exciting either visually or gameplaywise, the game looks as plain and boring as day, hyped under the guise of ambition. We all know how many of these "so called ambitious" games go. Lots promised, barely anything delivered. Infinite was supposed to be this "game changer" Halo game with lots of biomes, Anthem was supposed to be this huge AAA king with lots promised. Pretty much none of the MS marketing lived up, not forgetting Crackdown 3 and Sea of Thieves....

Starfield from what I've seen would be slaughtered by honest reviewers if released this year, boring gameplay with sub par character animations and visuals and that framerate was awful, so you could have expected many chokepoints at 0fps in typical Bethesda style. Redfall, if released would just be another game that looks no better than World War Z, Vampyr or State of Decay in what it brings to the sub genre, so nothing to really ground the hype on. Fable was always a no show after all those years at MS conferences, it was not because things were going great. All these Starfield delays or Halo Infinite delays or Crackdown delays, it's not because it's going good. Even Forza Motosport from the trailer I've seen looks unimpressive against GT7 for a so called next gen only game that's been in development for a while. Even a remake in Perfect Dark seems to be in development trouble...

Saying "Game will come out when it's ready" is nice and all, but that is just PR talk usually for games in development hell...

 

[Yobo]

Problem for Starfield, like all Bethesda games, they just aren't fun to play. And that's much less acceptable than in 2011 where open worlds were still fairly uncommon

 

[Vertigo]

I’ve said this before here but I’ll say it again for new thread.

Starfield must be more polished than any other Bethesda game. Which includes being more polished than their games exist as now.

After Cyberpunk, which in truth launched no worse than any typical Bethesda release, they will not be able to get away with it anymore. MS itself also should be concerned to not rush launch considering Halo’s struggles.

Honestly it should be ALL HANDS ON DECK. And not from just Bethesda’s teams but from Xbox studios as well even at the cost of other projects.

 

[Kokoloko]

TBH Im not into ”Talking sims” with awful combat.

If action games like Uncharted, TLOU and GOW are classed as “walking sims” because you freakin walk and have a conversation sometimes, then games like Skyrim, Avowed and Starfield are just talking sims with shite gameplay.

 

[thelastword]

I’ve said this before here but I’ll say it again for new thread.

Starfield must be more polished than any other Bethesda game. Which includes being more polished than their games exist as now.

After Cyberpunk, which in truth launched no worse than any typical Bethesda release, they will not be able to get away with it anymore. MS itself also should be concerned to not rush launch considering Halo’s struggles.

Honestly it should be ALL HANDS ON DECK. And not from just Bethesda’s teams but from Xbox studios as well even at the cost of other projects.

Yes, it should be more polished, but will it? is always the question. Looking at the last trailer, I can already see all the jank and the gifs being compiled by crowbcat and gamers on forums everywhere....Starfield was not ready last year, it was not ready when they said it would be ready this year and knowing Bethesda's Jank levels, it still won't be ready when it launches. Just as Halo was still not ready when it launched after years upon years. The Industry may still fellate, but even said industry journalists have shown they are not impervious to calling out Bethesda's lack of polish. They called Bethesda out on Fallout 76, so they better bring it. Yet the animation on Starfield, the char models are so subpar, the colors are just brown and grey, the levels look empty and bland and so do the visuals with a gameplay loop of (land your ship on the barren desert), go through some menus, fight a few inhabitants along the way for a special item rinse repeat and the thing is the combat is not even that great to keep you engaged and rewarded, we've all seen it before in Bethesda games...It's the same rinse and repeat.

TBH Im not into ”Talking sims” with awful combat.

If action games like Uncharted, TLOU and GOW are classed as “walking sims” because you freakin walk and have a conversation sometimes, then games like Skyrim, Avowed and Starfield are just talking sims with shite gameplay.

I concur, my wish however is to see the guys calling LOU, GOW and UC walking sims to play the game, their skills must be legendary since all they do in these games is go through cutscenes...

 

[ethomaz]

TBH Im not into ”Talking sims” with awful combat.

If action games like Uncharted, TLOU and GOW are classed as “walking sims” because you freakin walk and have a conversation sometimes, then games like Skyrim, Avowed and Starfield are just talking sims with shite gameplay.

To be fair most WJRPG have bad combat systems.
See the multi-awarded The Witcher III... it is mediocre in terms of combat but everybody get blind about that part and just talk about how good everything else is.

The Witcher III is the perfect example of unplayable to me even when I liked the story, presentation and core game design.
Skyrim the same... people are into Bestelda games for the story telling... not gameplay, presentation or bugs.

I wish we could have both... a Witcher game with good combat system.