Why ‘Starfield’ Is Too Big to Fail for Microsoft
It was clear Bethesda Softworks needed to step its game up after the disastrous launch of “Fallout 76” in 2018.
Five years later, “Starfield” is the result. Only thing is, Bethesda answers to someone else now.
When it releases Wednesday, “Starfield” will be as pivotal a game for Bethesda owner Microsoft and its aggressive attempts to set up the Xbox brand for enduring success as it will be for Bethesda’s reputation in the gaming community. After buying Bethesda parent ZeniMax in 2021 for $7.5 billion, Microsoft in 2022 agreed to acquire “Call of Duty” giant Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, a deal that has yet to close after drawing a whirlwind of regulatory scrutiny that is only now starting to abate.
Famed for its franchises “The Elder Scrolls” and “Fallout,” Bethesda Game Studios typically turns out titles that are large, open-world RPG experiences granting players a ton of flexibility and gameplay hours to complete a variety of quests or just explore the map, with many games surpassing 100 hours for hard-core completionists.
“Fallout 76” launched without many of these elements, prioritizing multiplayer gameplay as a first-time live service that was filled with numerous game-breaking bugs, causing a firestorm of player backlash and accusations that it was nothing more than cash grab.
Successful live services are often desirable assets for publishers, but “Starfield” and its single-player return to form is expected to play a different role within the Xbox ecosystem, which is straining to release exclusive games at the output that PlayStation does.
Current estimates show PlayStation 5 has been outselling Xbox Series X/S at around two to one, as PlayStation 4 did with Xbox One. Like the last console generation, Microsoft does not disclose exact console sales, while Sony releases those in its quarterly earnings — although Microsoft cited a 13% decrease in hardware revenue “driven by lower volume of consoles sold” in its recent earnings.
Microsoft did ramp up its first-party studios before new consoles launched in 2020, but development cycles for AAA games are as long as they’ve ever been. Active development for “Starfield” started eight years ago, and Bethesda Softworks has released just four games for current-gen consoles.
The first two, 2021’s “Deathloop” and “Ghostwire: Tokyo” in 2022, originally launched as timed PlayStation 5 exclusives, forcing Xbox owners to wait at least a year to play them, thanks to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s distribution deals before Bethesda joined the Xbox family.
A smaller game, “Hi-Fi Rush,” released in January 2023 to critical acclaim, but the first AAA video game from Bethesda to make an exclusive console debut on Xbox, “Redfall,” was widely panned the following May. Like “Fallout 76” and Bethesda Game Studios, “Redfall” was a multiplayer live-service game developed by Arkane, a studio otherwise known and praised for single-player titles.
Microsoft embracing console exclusivity through Bethesda was a major point of contention throughout various regulatory hearings for the pending deal with Activision Blizzard, as the FTC, the U.K.’s CMA and Sony executives all expressed concern the same would occur with Activision games like “Call of Duty” on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service and its cloud gaming tier, even as Microsoft pledged to keep “Call of Duty” multiplatform.
Xbox has seen great success on the subscription side, having grown Game Pass subscribers rapidly throughout the pandemic. The company often releases new console exclusives on Game Pass alongside digital and physical versions of those games, which will be the case for “Starfield” next week, making the game an enormous asset to the service.
SIE does not do this with its PlayStation Plus subscription, where exclusives typically take a year to show up on the service, thus putting the brand at a notable disadvantage on the subscription front. Just as “Starfield” makes its Xbox Game Pass debut in September, all PS Plus tiers will see price hikes, with its highest tier increasing by $40 annually, a sign the service could really use its own “Starfield.”
That doesn’t mean Xbox Game Pass is infallible.
The last time Microsoft disclosed subscriber numbers was January 2022, suggesting the company no longer feels confident boasting about the service’s growth, much like its refusal to regularly reveal sales of its consoles. Likewise, the value of the service to gamers continues to negatively impact individual game sales at Xbox. “Starfield” becoming the most top-of-mind game in the industry may certainly be what compels an actual update on Game Pass subscribers.
So far, it’s hard to say whether the game is set for bona fide success, like “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” or “Fallout 4” were back in the day, with the latter netting $750 million on its launch day in 2016. The review embargo was Thursday, and Metacritic shows an 87% score on Xbox from 44 critics, but many prominent publications claim they didn’t receive review codes in time. Still, that isn’t an uncommon pattern with Bethesda games.
Even if the game does see a ton of engagement and wide acclaim from players at launch, its true measure of success likely won’t be felt until Microsoft reports Q3 earnings. If the game underperforms, the company can only cross its fingers that its Activision deal finally closes.
