The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition Is Getting Mixed Feedback For Xbox Series X|S

Great reviews, but there are grumbles too

by Fraser Gilbert Wed 8th Mar 2023

The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition officially launched on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S earlier this week following its surprise announcement in late February, and the first impressions have been pretty interesting to see.

Basically, the reviews are mostly very positive. There haven't been many of them yet, but OpenCritic has given the game a "Top Critic Average" of 83, which puts it in the "Strong" category on that website. The improved visuals are a highlight in a few of these reviews, and many of them also focus on the actual base game and its DLCs being excellent as well - which obviously we already knew.

So, what's the downside here? Well, all the grumbles are primarily related to performance right now, with reports of frame rate drops across consoles and PC. This includes the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S versions (particularly the former), which is disappointing considering how well the base game already ran on those platforms.

There are a couple of other concerns as well, such as issues with the upgrade path, but performance definitely seems to be top of mind for most Xbox owners of the Spacer's Choice Edition right now. Here's hoping we'll get a patch pretty soon to iron out these issues - the PC version seems to particularly need it, as it's currently sitting on a "Mostly Negative" rating based on the Steam reviews so far.

We did reach out for a review copy of The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition but didn't receive one ahead of launch, so we haven't tested any of this ourselves as of yet. However, the excellent "Fuzion Xbox Testing" on YouTube has provided a brief look at the game running on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and you can see this below:

Have you tried The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition yet? Tell us in the comments down below.

Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.

1
BookhouseBoy
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Thanks for the video, I'll have a look at that later. Seems a bit stingy that it's not on Gamepass when the original is. It's just a glorified patch really.

2
MattWithoutFear
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Wish this had a Game Pass upgrade route like the Skyrim Anniversary Edition.

3
Trmn8r
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Private Division's last ditch attempt to make money on it before the IP becomes fully Microsoft's. Guessing this was some agreement made with them. Notice the responses to tweet complaints tells them to contact Private Division?

4
NEStalgia
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Pretty sad that a game this old from last gen gets a full priced enhancement patch and said patch has terrible performance.... Private Division may be the publisher, but Obsidian's responsible for the game's performance...

5
MinervaX
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Curious if this edition was outsourced….

@NEStalgia if obsidian handled this upgrade yes, but it’s not impossible that this upgrade was outsourced by Private Division if Obsidian didn’t have the bandwidth to work on it.

6
awp69
Wed 8th Mar 2023

@Tharsman @NEStalgia This upgrade was outsourced by Private Division. Have to find the company name again but it wasn’t Obsidian.

Edit: Virtuous handled the upgrade.

7
TheGrizMan
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Wow, another game performing horribly on Xbox? Shocker.

8
NEStalgia
Wed 8th Mar 2023

@awp69 Oh, well, that explains a lot. That's unfortunate. Not that Obsidian doesn't have its hands full with Pentiment, Grounded, Avowed, all at once plus anything else they're working on, but....this is a weird situation with a first party studio's game published by a third party issuing an unnecessary overpriced enhanced version that was poorly enhanced by a different third party.

9
MinervaX
Wed 8th Mar 2023

@awp69 I see, so at the end this release was indeed a rushed cash grab to milk their publishing contract as far as they could.

This game is in my backlog but I think I might just play the Obsidian releases. It’s already 4k/60 on XSX anyways, I hear.

10
MinervaX
Wed 8th Mar 2023

@NEStalgia yea does not look great. Xbox should somehow buy Private Division out of this contract, assuming it’s not ending soon.

Hopefully they don’t have the ability to pull it from Game Pass the way it happened with We Happy Few.

11
NEStalgia
Wed 8th Mar 2023

@Tharsman Yeah seems bad on Xbox, bad on PS5 and even worse on PC. They managed to take a stable game, make it unstable, and charge for the privilege. Virtuosos is decent. Publisher must have rushed or underpaid. But it sure looks bad for Xbox/obsidian and devalues their brand, and REALLY harms the Outer Worlds IP.

12
itslarryyo
Wed 8th Mar 2023

@Sebatrox it was originally released at 60fps. Its extremely disappointing.

13
Nydius
Wed 8th Mar 2023

Morbid curiosity got the better of me last night and I bought the upgrade on Series X. Needless to say, I've wasted my money until there's a performance patch. The performance videos don't show just how awful this remaster runs. If it were just a matter of dropping down into the low 50s, I could live but the frequency of the drops, the fact that it often drops well into the 40s, and the CONSTANT stuttering is beyond atrocious. VRR/FreeSync doesn't even help. It's so stuttery that it almost gives me motion sickness at times — and I'm not prone to motion sickness except when playing VR.

I really feel bad for Obsidian because they're going to have their reputation tarnished over a product they had little to nothing to do with. This is entirely the fault of Virtuos Games and Private Division/Take-Two pushing out a quick cash grab 'remaster'.

Frankly, I'm not even sure I find the lighting improvements as great as everyone keeps saying they are. Everything looks oversaturated and washed out, like a cartoon. Reds and oranges are blindingly prominent now.

14
Garamari
Thu 9th Mar 2023

So for those of you that don't know this is a last minute cash grab by Private Division to milk what they can from The Outer Worlds before they lose the publishing rights. These upgrades where done fast handed and Obsidian was not involved in it's creation. You'd do best to not buy it.

15
abe_hikura
Thu 9th Mar 2023

@Garamari Obsidain did drop this over at Reddit. Nice PR speak for We're sorry someone else did a bad job

"I am sorry that you all have been experiencing performance issues with The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition." The post continues: "I understand how frustrating this can be, and I assure you the team at Private Division is working on getting a patch out as soon as possible. When we have more information about that patch we'll be sure to let folks know."