Starfield Delayed Again, Now Releasing September 2023

By Tim Bowman, March 8, 2023

One of Microsoft’s biggest games for the year faces another delay to this fall.

Starfield, the anticipated role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, has been delayed again. Its developer made the announcement on Wednesday. Set to release during the first half of this year, the game’s new release date is now Sept. 6, 2023 for the Xbox Series X|S and PC on Steam and Windows. The game will also be available to play day one for Xbox Game Pass subscribers on Xbox next-gen consoles and PC.

The game is console-exclusive to Microsoft platforms, who purchased Bethesda Game Studios, its publisher Bethesda Softworks and parent company ZeniMax Media Inc. for $7.5 billion in September 2020. The sale finalized in March 2021.

In an announcement video, Todd Howard, Starfield’s director and executive producer for Bethesda Game Studios, said, “We know you’ve waited a long time to play something new from us. Believe it or not, we’re kind of the same. We miss it, and we really just can’t wait for you all to play it.”

At E3 in June 2021 it was first announced the game would launch on Nov. 11, 2022 but got delayed in May 2022 to the first part of this year. Howard had told The Washington Post in June 2021 that they were sure Starfield would release on that November 2022 date and wouldn’t have announced it otherwise. Starfield was first revealed at E3 in June 2018. The game has been in active development since at least late 2015.

Starfield is the first new game world outside of the studio’s other major franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout in over 25 years, with a futuristic, sci-fi setting. The developer’s last games were The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), Fallout 4 (2015) and Fallout 76 (2018).

Starfield will be set in the year 2330 and feature over 100 systems and 1,000 different planets to explore. Players will be able to customize their character and their spaceship with a lot of different options. Starfield will also feature different factions across “The Settled Systems,” one of the main settings in the story. Players will still be able to recruit AI-companion characters throughout the story. The game will be playable in both the first and third-person perspectives.

“The game has many of the hallmarks that you’d expect from us, but it’s also a very unique experience,” Howard said.

These large, open world Bethesda games have a history of lengthy development times throughout the different franchises and titles, often with numerous bugs and glitches still present at launch.

There will be a “Starfield Direct” stream on June 11 with more information about the game being revealed and inside looks from the studio.

Watch the game’s latest trailer and Howard’s announcement: