The games industry is shifting to make way for Bethesda Game Studios’ sci-fi RPG Starfield. Twelve years on from the release of Skyrim, Starfield hype is changing the games market in a way only Bethesda games can.
Releasing on Xbox Series consoles and PC on September 6th, Starfield has already become one of the highest selling games on Steam, much to the ire of PC gamers. However, its popularity has caused other PC developers to move their games’ release date to avoid competing with Bethesda’s RPG.
On Thursday, CRPG developer Larian Studios moved its long-planned Baldur’s Gate 3 release date forward to avoid conflict with the unstoppable wave of Starfield hype. Instead of launching on August 31st, six days before Starfield and just one day before its Constellation Edition, the CRPG will now release on August 3rd.
In a blog post addressing the new release date, Larian explained that the game will now release “at a time where you’ll have more time to play it”. However, this new release only relates to the PC version. As Starfield is not releasing on PlayStation 5, Baldur’s Gate 3’s PS5 port will launch on September 6th. There are currently development issues with game’s Xbox version.
Speaking to IGN, Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke acknowledged the hype for Bethesda’s RPG, but also explained that other games are also the issue as well.
“There's always going to be competition and games coming out at the same time,,” they said. “We had this PC version we were sitting on and we were saying, there's a window there where players will be able to spend their time playing the games they want to play. They want to play Baldur's Gate 3. They want to play Starfield. They want to play Diablo. They want to play Final Fantasy. And there's only so much time they have in their busy gaming schedules.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the only game attempting to escape from Starfield hype. In fact, Fallout: London, large-scale mod that started development in 2019, has been delayed to an indefinite later date in order to avoid Bethesda’s new game.
Due to Starfield’s unstoppable hype amongst PC players, Fallout: London will not release sometime in Q4 2023. This means that fans may be able to play the total conversion mod sometime after October 2023.
The months leading up to the release of Starfield have been left smartly bare by developers. Even on PlayStation, a platform where Starfield isn’t releasing, upcoming game releases are scarce until the launch of Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2 and nearly everything else in October.
Bethesda Game Studios has reportedly been working on polishing Starfield for the last two years. After numerous delays, the game looks visually great, and fans are more than excited for the upcoming RPG. After the slight disappointment that was Fallout 4, Starfield could be Bethesda’s biggest game since 2011, even if it lacks DLSS.
Starfield releases on Xbox Series and PC on September 6th. The game will also be available on Xbox Cloud Gaming on PC, mobile and Xbox One.