Bethesda fans have been waiting years to play the company’s open world sci-fi RPGStarfield, and after the release date was announced at last year’s E3 with a cinematic trailer, many had marked their calendars in anticipation.Bethesda said it was confident inStarfield’s release date, and so it seemed as though the game was positioned to be one of the big new releases for fall 2022. Unfortunately for Bethesda fans, things have changed, and now they don’t know exactly when they’ll get to playStarfield.
Bethesda recently announced that it made the difficult decision todelayStarfield’s release date to 2023. The game is still expected to release at some point in the first half of next year, but it’s still going to leave a big gap for Xbox’s lineup this holiday season. After all,Starfieldwas primed to be one of the first major Xbox Series X console exclusive titles, taking full advantage of the new hardware and giving early adopters a good reason to own the next-gen Xbox.
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Not only doesStarfield’s release date delay hurt Xbox in general, but it is also a big blow to theXbox Game Passsubscription service, and it honestly couldn’t have come at a worse time.Redfallwas delayed alongsideStarfield, and with both games scheduled to be day one Xbox Game Pass games, it means that the service has lost two of its big selling points this year.
LosingRedfallandStarfieldto 2023 is going to hurt Xbox Game Pass big time, especially if Microsoft doesn’t have an answer to fill the gap. If Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision goes faster than expected, then maybe that will be a way to soften the blow, but by all accounts, it looks like that process is likely going to stretch into 2023 as well. It’s likely that thenextForza Motorsportgamewill release in 2022, and there’s also the indie horror gameScorncoming to Xbox Game Pass, but otherwise the lineup this year is looking rather bare.
Regardless, theStarfielddelay is going to hurt, especially since the game was being pushed as Xbox’s premiere holiday 2022 release. But there’s another reason why theStarfielddelay is such a big blow toXbox Game Passin 2022. Besides the fact that it makes the Xbox Game Pass 2022 lineup look a little disappointing, there’s also Xbox’s chief competition to keep in mind, and Sony is gearing up to make some anti-Game Pass moves in the very near future.
The big selling point of Xbox Game Pass over PS Plus Premium is thatGame Pass has day one releases. PS Plus Premium is not really going to have day one releases, especially not from first-party Sony studios, and so the loss of major day one releases for Game Pass this year puts PS Plus Premium in a good position. It’s clear that Microsoft will need to make some big moves to bolster the value of Xbox Game Pass in 2022 withStarfield’s delay and PS Plus Premium right around the corner, and it will be interesting to see if it does so.
