It's no secret that Starfield — out now on PC and Xbox Series S/X — is hands down one of the most monumental game launches of the year. For Bethesda, it's a gamble in uncharted territory as they undertake their first new universe in 25 years, set across the stars in a futuristic civilised corner of the Milky Way galaxy. For publisher Xbox, it's an opportunity to bounce back from a lacklustre 2022 slate and dominate the gaming conversation for a long time — probably years, given the staying power director Todd Howard's RPGs are notorious for. With over a thousand planets to explore, dashing factions to align with, and cosmic mysteries bubbling with political intrigue, Starfield aims to be the most complex spacefaring adventure of our generation. As such, it soars gracefully, but not without some turbulence.
Starfield review controversy traces game journalism's orbital decay | This Week in Business
01.09.2023 - 15:19 / gamesindustry.biz / Tom Phillips / Charles
This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check back every Friday for a new entry.
Starfield launches today for those who paid extra for the Premium edition, so in the grand tradition of Bethesda games, we're going to talk about how broken stuff is.
No, not Starfield stuff. For all I know, the game has been polished to a shine with nary a glitch in sight.
Instead, we're going to talk about how buggy and broken games journalism is, prompted in part by a mini-scandal around who got review codes in advance, and who didn't.
QUOTE | "Access to the game appears to have been heavily restricted in the UK, where Bethesda has also not provided copies of Starfield to other websites and YouTube channels owned by Eurogamer parent company Reedpop." – On Tuesday, Eurogamer editor-in-chief Tom Phillips explained to readers that Eurogamer would not have a review of Starfield in time for Thursday's embargo.
Writers from UK-based outlets The Guardian, Edge, and Metro also publicly confirmed they had not received review codes of the game.
GamesIndustry.biz also did not receive a review code, which could be because we're also owned by Reedpop, because we don't actually review games, or because the one time we did run a review, we gave the biggest game of the year a zero out of ten.
There's been a lot of speculation about why Bethesda snubbed specifically these sites for Starfield, and a lot of it doesn't really hold water.
Was it revenge for scathing reviews of Bethesda Game Studios' last big title, Fallout 76? That game reviewed poorly everywhere, and some of the American outlets who got review codes were among its biggest detractors.
IGN and GameSpot came in on the low end of the Fallout 76 reviews with a 5 out of 10 and a 4 out of 10, respectively. They're also two of the harshest early assessors of Starfield, both giving Bethesda's latest a 7 out of 10.
Was it a roundabout way of following through on Microsoft's implied threats to the UK after the country's regulator blocked the Activision Blizzard acquisition? I have all the time in the world for stories about massive companies being laughably petty about all slights both real and perceived, but even I find that one far-fetched.
Was it targeting the UK for a more deserved transgression, like Peppa Pig? If so, there would be no reason to be so secretive about the motive and risk coming off as the bad guy here.
Does Starfield's narrative cast Space Britain as the evil empire and climax with you hunting down and killing King Charles, who has been kept alive as a Futurama-like head in a jar?
Xbox Game Pass Core is launching with 36 games this week
By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.
Starfield Review - Written In The Stars
My Starfield review-in-progress went up 11 days ago, on August 31. I had made my way through a good chunk of the main quest and was getting my bearings in Bethesda's gigantic universe. Now that I'm on the other side of dozens of hours spent galavanting through the galaxy, much of what I said before still holds true, and other than some small nitpicks, Starfield is truly out of this world. And now that pun is officially out of the way.
Dune: Spice Wars launches this week
The hybrid 4X and RTS set in Frank Herbert's universe of Dune will launch out of Early Access this week, on September 14th, as Shiro Games releases Dune: Spice Wars. First released last year, Spice Wars is a surprising hybrid of the two genres that you'd expect from modern RTS innovators Shiro Games, who previously made Northgard.
Starfield Review in Progress – It has Skyrim’s eyes and Fallout’s nose
It’s a little bit funny to think that, while Starfield features a brand new sci-fi galaxy to explore, it was also almost jokingly a known quantity for gamers well before launch. Bethesda Game Studios has a type of game that they make, and while Starfield’s story is of an adventure to find the unknown, the actual game itself feels immediately familiar.
Starfield – Review
Xbox’s most anticipated game in years has finally arrived and it’s reaching for the stars… While everyone has been preparing for lift-off, we’ve spent the last week sailing around the universe to discover if Starfield is a small step for games or a giant leap for gaming kind.
Starfield Review
To say there’s been a great deal of hype leading up to this point for one of the first Microsoft/Bethesda post-merger is a bit of an understatement. There’s been a lot said about one of the first feature games of its new era, Starfield. While most of the game’s coverage has been largely positive, the talk on behind-the-scenes matters hasn’t always been.
The most interesting game I've played this week is an indie puzzle-adventure about a giant tower filled with people I can't understand
Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 are all the rage right now, but I'm here to tell you about something different. It's a lush indie puzzle-adventure game «inspired by the myth of Babel» called Chants of Sennaar, and it's out now on Steam.
Starfield review roundup: epically broad, yet frustratingly shallow?
Starfield is the most anticipated game launch in recent memory. After a seven-year development cycle, this oh-so-slow-baked RPG from Todd Howard and Bethesda gets roasted by the critics (apart from those in the UK) and the result? The taste is pleasant but less than thrilling, at least for some.
Starfield review: Let me play among the stars
We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of «Playing the Edge.» Apply to speak here and learn more about sponsorship opportunities here. At the event, we will also announce 25 top game startups as the 2024 Game Changers. Apply or nominate today!
Starfield Fan Gifted Adorable Game Day Gift Basket by Girlfriend
With the early access release for Starfield mere hours away, fans are making their final preparations before diving into Bethesda’s latest RPG for the foreseeable future. With 1,000 planets to explore and what feels like limitless potential for exploration, fans of the developer’s previous titles, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4, are ready to lose themselves for the rest of 2023 to this game.
Podcast: Starfield Review Special
The latest episode of VGC: A Video Games Podcast is now available on all major audio platforms.