Starfield: all the news about Bethesda’s massive space RPG – The Verge

Starfield’s big Shattered Space expansion isn’t weird enough

2024-10-05T09:00:00-04:00

It's been a long time coming for Starfield players. Bethesda's sci-fi take on Skyrim originally launched last summer, and while there have been some updates and improvements since then, it's taken more than a year for the game to get its first major expansion. This lead-up means there's a lot riding on Shattered Space - which is a perfectly fine addition to the game that also feels incredibly underwhelming. After a promising setup, it ends up mostly being more of the same.

Things start, as they so often do in expansions, with a distress call. This one leads you to a derelict space station that is brimming with ghostly apparitions and which …

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Starfield is finally getting a 60fps mode on Xbox

2024-05-01T13:15:06-04:00

Starfield players on Xbox will no longer have to deal with the game's 30-frames-per-second (fps) cap. As part of an update arriving on May 15th, Bethesda will let Xbox Series X players run the game at 60fps.

The 60fps option comes as part of several new display customization settings. The game will let you choose to prioritize visuals to "[keep] the highest resolution while maintaining full detail for special effects, lighting, and crowds" or choose to prioritize frame rate performance, which will "[lower] internal resolution and detail for special effects, lighting, and crowds." Bethesda recommends choosing the performance mode when runnin …

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Starfield’s DLSS 3 support is coming in a beta patch soon

2023-11-01T16:41:17-04:00

Bethesda is almost ready to officially add Nvidia's graphics upscaling technology to Starfield, but it will look for help from the PC gaming community first with an opt-in beta test available via Steam.

The company says the game's next update will support DLSS with frame generation (which would mean DLSS 3, if not 3.5) as well as display and HDR controls for supported systems.

The RPG's lack of support for DLSS was an issue before it even launched, with "exclusive PC partner" AMD forced to come out and insist that Bethesda would have its full support if the developers wanted to add support for the Nvidia technology. Once the game was ava …

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Xbox and cloud help boost Microsoft’s Q1 2024 earnings

2023-10-24T18:32:30-04:00

Microsoft just posted the first quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $56.5 billion in revenue and a net income of $22.3 billion during Q1. Revenue is up 13 percent, and net income has increased by 27 percent. Devices revenue has been hit hard again this quarter, even if Windows has recovered slightly. The star of Microsoft's earnings are cloud services and Office, though.

Windows OEM revenue, the price that PC manufacturers pay Microsoft to put Windows on laptops and PCs, is up 4 percent this quarter. It's a surprise increase, given we've seen a general weakness in PC sales over the past year, with Windows O …

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Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines, is retiring after 24 years

2023-10-16T10:42:24-04:00

Pete Hines, the head of publishing at Bethesda, is retiring after 24 years at the gaming company. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Hines announced that his time at Bethesda "has come to an end." Hines first joined Bethesda in 1999 as the senior vice president of global marketing and communications, becoming a well-known figure at the company and the face of Fallout. Last year, Hines became Bethesda's head of publishing.

Bethesda has seen some major shifts over the past couple of years. Microsoft completed its acquisition of the Skyrim developer in 2021. In August, Bethesda released the space exploration RPG Starfield following the rocky l …

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Microsoft addresses the huge Xbox leaks: here’s Phil Spencer’s full memo

2023-09-19T16:56:23-04:00

Xbox chief Phil Spencer has just emailed Microsoft employees about the massive Xbox leak that happened earlier today. In the internal memo, obtained by The Verge, Spencer says Microsoft's Xbox plans "were unintentionally disclosed" as part of the FTC v. Microsoft case. Documents revealed a lot: a disc-less Series X redesign, a 2028 Xbox that could deliver "cloud hybrid games," a new Xbox controller, unannounced Bethesda games, and even discussions about acquiring Nintendo.

Spencer hints that Microsoft's plans may have changed, particularly as some documents were from last year, but others were from years prior. "I know this is disappointing …

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The newest Steam Deck preview tests VRR, HDR, and improvements for Starfield

2023-09-15T19:00:56-04:00

Valve's next major SteamOS update brings some significant new display settings as well as some new performance improvements to Steam Deck. You can read all about the SteamOS 3.5 update in a blog post on the Steam website.

Two major new features are support for variable refresh rates (VRR) and HDR if you're using your Steam Deck with an external display that supports them. Valve says that HDR can be enabled if you have a compatible display while VRR can be enabled if you have a compatible USB-C adapter.

The company has also changed the Steam Deck's default color rendering to "emulate the sRGB color gamut," which Valve says will result in "a …

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Starfield is getting DLSS, an FOV slider, and ultrawide monitor support

2023-09-13T11:30:35-04:00

Bethesda is planning to add Nvidia's DLSS upscaling technique to Starfield soon. It's part of a bunch of promises for updates to the game, including brightness and contrast controls, an FOV slider, 32:9 ultrawide monitor support, and even an eat button for food.

Bethesda is releasing a small hotfix today to fix some bugs in the game before it dives into feature requests. "Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed, and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for," says Bethesda in patch notes released today. "This first update is a small hotfix targeted at the few top issues wer …

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Nvidia boosts Starfield performance with GPU driver update

2023-09-12T12:24:35-04:00

Nvidia is rolling out an update that will improve Starfield performance for owners of RTX 30- and 40-series cards. Nvidia says its automatic over-the-air update will enable Resizable BAR and boost Starfield performance for its latest GPUs.

"Today, Nvidia is releasing a Resizable BAR profile for Starfield which increases performance on GeForce RTX 40 Series and GeForce RTX 30 Series desktop and laptop GPUs," explains Andrew Burnes, technical marketer at Nvidia, in a blog post. "In our testing scenario, GeForce RTX 40-series desktop GPUs see on average a 5 percent increase in performance."

The over-the-air update will be applied to the exist …

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Starfield is a ‘bizarrely worse experience’ on Nvidia and Intel, says Digital Foundry

2023-09-11T10:25:02-04:00

Starfield is one of the most demanding games on PC that we've seen recently, with even the RTX 4090 paired with AMD's latest Ryzen 7800X3D just about hitting 60fps on average at 4K with all the settings maxed out. As reviewers and testers scramble to figure out why Starfield is so heavy, the experts over at Digital Foundry have discovered some obvious differences between AMD and Intel / Nvidia systems.

"If you're on Intel and Nvidia you're getting a bizarrely worse experience here in comparison to AMD GPUs in a way that's completely out of the norm," explains Alexander Battaglia in a detailed 32-minute tech analysis of Starfield on PC.

AMD …

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