Microsoft's Phil Spencer: Starfield delay is right decision

2023-04-10 15:38

'Starfield' and 'Redfall' were delayed to give players “the best, most polished versions of them”.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer says pushing back the release of 'Starfield' is the "right decision".

The highly-anticipated Bethesda title was set to launch this month but was moved back until 2023, and Microsoft boss Phil Spencer has spoken about the delay and how it's best that they take the time to perfect the product with all of the money poured into it.

He told The Verge: “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 continued: “'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."

Meanwhile, the main story of 'Starfield' alone could take between 30 to 40 hours to complete.

Director Todd Howard said this is down to there being 20 per cent more main story quests than any other role-playing title by Bethesda, such as 'Fallout' and 'Skyrim'.

He's also promised more DLC expansions to add to the runtime and admitted the modding community will go crazy for all the content.

Howard told IGN recently: "We’ve learned that people do play our games for a really, really long time.

"They’re still playing 'Skyrim' – not straight for 10 years, but they leave it and they come back and there’s extra content.

"Certainly we’re going to be doing extra content for this game, and we love our modding community. We actually think this game, for our modding community, is going to be a dream as there’s so much they could do."

'Starfield' will release exclusively on the Xbox Series X/S and PC in the first half of 2023.

And Howard previously hinted PlayStation viewers could get to play the game in some form in the future, although there's no guarantee.

Asked if he regrets the exclusivity of the title, he replied: "Well, we're still … I will just say I want everybody to have the ability to play it in some fashion."