Highlights
- Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard dismisses concerns about Starfield's PC optimization, stating that the game has been well-optimized and is running great on next-gen PCs.
- Early player impressions suggest that Starfield requires a beefy PC for smooth performance with maxed-out settings due to its CPU-intensive nature and complex mechanics.
- AMD is Starfield's exclusive PC partner, providing an advantage to rigs with Ryzen processors and Radeon GPUs. PC players unsatisfied with performance can explore optimization mods.
Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard has responded to some Starfield PC optimization concerns from the fandom. His comments on the matter coincided with Starfield's long-awaited release.
The minimum and recommended system requirements for Starfield that Bethesda disclosed back in June already confirmed that its space-faring RPG will be a fairly demanding title. And though the game is unsurprisingly locked to 30 frames per second on the current-generation Xbox consoles, some fans were still expecting to be able to get a significantly smoother experience with maxed-out settings on PC. Early player impressions suggest many failed to do so, giving rise to speculation that Starfield hasn't been well-optimized for PC.
Howard has now dismissed those allegations in a recent interview with Bloomberg, stating that Starfield has indeed been optimized for PC in response to a fan question that posited the opposite. "It's running great," the industry veteran said, while also highlighting how Starfield is a "next-gen PC" game. As such, "you may need to upgrade your PC," Howard concluded, noting that the experience will be worth it.
And while some players unhappy with the game's PC performance might not find this answer satisfactory, the day-one version of Starfield still appears to be in a much better state than Bethesda's past AAA RPGs were. The fact that the studio delayed the game twice in order to get more time to polish it plausibly contributed to that improvement, although Howard himself claims the Xbox console exclusivity also made Starfield better than it would have been if it was targeting even more platforms.
As was the case with all of Bethesda's open-world RPGs since The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Starfield is a fairly CPU-intensive game relative to its average AAA peer. That's likely in no small part thanks to the fact that its world boasts absolute object permanence, a feature that few other developers dare to tackle. Combined with the game's complex ship and outpost building mechanics allowing for immense creativity, running Starfield at a smooth frame rate with maxed-out settings necessitates an all-around beefy PC.
Rigs with Ryzen processors and Radeon GPUs might have a slightly easier time with the game for the time being, as AMD happens to be Starfield's exclusive PC partner. Bethesda hence closely collaborated with the tech giant in order to ensure that Starfield is maximally optimized for AMD hardware, providing it with an inherent advantage over Intel and Nvidia products. PC players dissatisfied with the game's performance who aren't eager to heed Howard's advice to upgrade their rigs might instead want to look into some Starfield optimization mods that have already released.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.