Star Wars fans everywhere have plenty of reason to celebrate as the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is finally out...unless those same fans happen to play on PC. In what is becoming an increasingly common scenario for AAA game releases, the PC port of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is poorly optimized and incapable of maintaining a consistent frame rate on even impressively powerful rigs with high-end CPU and GPU. Unfortunately for Jedi: Survivor and other games that had PC ports launched in an abysmal state, the focus of the conversation on these games shifts from the actual quality of the gameplay to the issues people have while trying to play them.
While Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is certainly not the first AAA release to have a lackluster PC port at launch, it is also surely not going to be the last, which serves to highlight a growing issue within the industry. With many players primarily playing on consoles, as well as game developers and publishers seemingly focusing more prominently on those markets, it seems the PC ports of AAA games become an afterthought and are almost expected to be subject to multiple Day-0 or Day-1 patches to make them playable at launch. Both The Last of Us Remake's PC port and Jedi: Survivor are two AAA releases in 2023 where console performance outshines how each play on PC.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's PC Port Subjects the Game to Negative Reviews
One of the immediate consequences of this approach is that everything else gets ignored. What should be a time of celebration for the game's release and the efforts of the development team at Respawn instead becomes a shifting of the conversation to the Mostly Negative player reception on Steam due to performance. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has a current critic review score of 86 on Metacritic and is, by all accounts, a solid evolution of and worthy sequel to the fantastic game Respawn crafted with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Despite the warm critical reception, PC players' poor performance has correlated to negative reviews for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor that take the air out of the game's release.
In a scenario that mirrors The Last of Us Remake and Wild Hearts' PC releases earlier this year (among many other titles), Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a great game receiving negative reviews based solely on the fact that it was sold to players in an unfinished state. This is not to say that the negative reviews are unwarranted, but rather the industry seems doomed to repeat this time and again. The result is something that can significantly impact a game's long-term success.
Day-0 and Day-1 Patches Do Little to Restore Goodwill of Fans
It's apparent that Respawn understood the game's spotty performance on PC prior to the official launch through the implementation of a Day-1 patch and even Day-0 patches prior to release. Even though release decisions are not in the hands of developers, it often tends to breed ill will from players toward developers with many questioning if they knowingly released a broken product. It's not their fault in most cases, but that doesn't stop internet outrage that impacts the reception of a game and a studio.
Similar concerns were also raised about Naughty Dog and its handing off of the PC port of The Last of Us to a separate studio. Having different development studios handle the PC port of AAA games intended for a console is not an uncommon practice, but it certainly raises eyebrows when those ports ship in questionable states.
Despite the flawed launch, it isn't without cause. Considering that Respawn worked on the PC port of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor alongside the console versions, it's possible that the cross-platform development presented some difficulty for the studio. Whatever the case, the reliance on patches after an initial negative impression has been made seems to be too little, too late for many players. The studio has announced it is committed to fixing Jedi: Survivor's issues on PC, but ill-gotten PC ports are an industry-wide issue that needs to end.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.
