Bethesda has officially confirmed that Starfield will be releasing in the first half of 2023.

On the newly launched Starfield support page, Bethesda has provided this simple and succinct FAQ:

“What is Starfield’s release date?

Starfield arrives exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC in the first half of 2023.”

Speculation on Starfield’s release date or possible delays swirled when the Steam listing for the game changed the placeholder date from November 11, 2022 to December 29, 2023. We did eventually confirm that Microsoft would push back the release of the game to this year, to ensure that it would have the polish and finalizing needed to launch properly.

Phil Spencer had spoken honestly about delaying both Starfield and Redfall, the two publicly known upcoming Xbox Series exclusives, to this year. He had cited that Team Xbox was known for launching games too early in the past, and they wanted to avoid a repeat of this. It was easier to decide to delay Starfield in particular, because it was a significant investment that could not be allowed to fail.

We then heard from Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty revealing that they intended for Redfall to release before Starfield. While this new information did not have any information in regards to Redfall, it now seems likely that Redfall will also be releasing in the first half of 2023.

As we know, the pressure is on for Starfield to live up to expectations as the big Xbox Series franchise. Bethesda head Todd Howard himself said as much in a major interview he had with Lex Fridman last year.

In the same interview, Todd had spoken at length before about making Xbox their lead platform when they first rising to prominence, including games like Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls 3: Skyrim. These were multiplatform games, which came out for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 at the same time. But Bethesda planned these games for Xbox 360 before anything else.

So internally, their development process for Starfield is actually similar to their previous games. Now there is the added pressure of being an official Microsoft product. However, they now also get first party support, to ensure they will get the most out of the Xbox consoles as possible.

With Starfield’s pending release in mind, it now seems that Microsoft Gaming Chief Marketing Officer Aaron Greenberg’s prediction for 2023 was more than just marketing fluff. Microsoft already knows what they’re coming out with this year, and soon, we’ll be seeing them firsthand.

Source: Bethesda support via Twitter