The hype train for Starfield is picking up speed as we hurtle towards the game’s release date, and oh boy, are we all aboard for this cosmic ride. Picture this: cruising through space, popping by 1,000+ planets… epic, right? However, a tiny detail has some of our buddies worried about the frame rate on our beloved Xbox Series X and S.
So, Starfield will cruise steadily at 30fps on these consoles, and there’s no ‘performance mode’ to dial down those crisp graphics for a smoother frame rate. Before you hit the panic button, let me drop some wisdom from the man himself, Todd Howard, Bethesda’s director. In a chat on the Kinda Funny Games’ Xcast podcast, Todd set the record straight – Bethesda wasn’t about to sacrifice a single pixel to up that frames per second.
Todd said, “We never looked at taking features away – our focus is on delivering all of that. Ultimately, look, we boil it down to we wanted the consistency. The game is running great, but we don’t want players to ever think about it. We have obviously seen other games that have performance modes, and we lean toward consistency overall, and we talk to our fans and hear that from everybody.”
And get this, he added, “So, we’re feeling really great, the game feels great in your hands, and I would say – developers know this – but there are things that you can do to make that look and feel great. Things like motion blur, how fast the game refreshes or reacts to controller input, all of those things matter to something feeling great, and I can honestly say that this is the best-feeling game that we’ve had.”
Now, doesn’t that make you feel warm and fuzzy? We all know that consistency is key. A game rocking a stable 30fps can often look much smoother than one constantly trying to hit that elusive 50-60 frame rate but keeps stumbling along the way. So buckle up, space cadets – it’s time to get lost in the stars.
