Starfield Will Run At 4K / 30FPS On Xbox Series X, 1440p / 30FPS On Series S

I'm still gonna play it but I do hope there's gonna be a performance mode option.

Queue over reaction

Not even concerned about it. The game looks great.

Nor surprised as it is common for Bethesda. I would prefer 1080p 60fps but not a deal breaker as it is not a first person shooter only game

Good to have confirmation of what we already expected. People will still raise a stink about it . It's not a big deal.

Yep, expected this. Doesn’t bother me at all. Looks fantastic.

I thought it looked great I honestly dont know the difference between 30 and 60 maybe I am just too old.

Expected but wish xbox would stop overhyping the console and saying everything can do 60 pr 120 fps

If it is running 4k30, surely the settings could be adjusted for 1440p60.

It'll certainly be doable in PC, so it would be crazy to not have such a preset for the Series X.

Strange, when it was announced Redfall was only 30fps everyone had their pitchforks out, but this time people are more forgiving.

@UltimateOtaku91 Zelda reminded everyone we don't care if it's runs at 22fps IF it's a certified banger.

@UltimateOtaku91 aaron greenberg kept shouting from the rooftops that 60 fps would be the norm. Turned out to be another bold face lie, whether we knew it all along is irrelevant

@Suda52 The difference being I told everyone before these consoles came out that most of the marketing beats were bold faced lies. Who cares? Enjoy good games, or don't.

Graphics looked too good for me to think otherwise. Also, Idc if it's at 30 FPS, if it's consistent. This game is going to be great!

@themightyant But with Redfall people were moaning about the 30fps even before the reviews for the game came out.

@Suda52 Make no mistake, I'm not making excuses. I just never believed them from the start. I have the choice to be ye noble seeker of truth and take it personally, or just play video games and not give a rats arse. I'll be playing Starfield on a 3080ti PC that I built a year and a half ago because I've been saying from the start Starfield was never going to be 60fps. So, I'm maybe somewhat less shocked and appalled than you right now. If anything, my assinine PC upgrade just feels more validated.

@UltimateOtaku91 Redfall is (supposed to be) a fast paced shooter. Starfield is a massive RPG. Maybe one of the biggest games ever in scope. Much different. I expected 60 FPS for Redfall. I expected 30 FPS for Starfield. Two different expectations for me. That’s why I complained for one game and not the other. Others probably feel the same and that’s why you’re not seeing the same backlash.

Is the 30FPS lock also applicable to PC? Or could it potentially run at 60FPS on PC?

@Suda52 I mean, yeah, basically.

Honestly I have never had an issue with a solid 30fps. I was happy enough when I played RDR2, GTA 5, Spiderman, GOW, Ghost of Tsushima and many others, so I don't think I'm going to have a problem here.

If I did have a problem i'd just try and save up to get a £2000+ Pc and not a £250 console.

Going to get the Series X soon because I do love a bit of 4K and will finally be getting a 4K TV.

I'm never playing another 30 fps shooter. This game is dead to me u less it gets patched.

Heres the "most powerful console in the world" for you.

30fps in 2023….. not too bothered as it is a Gamepass game after all, but I’ll always take fps over resolution. Would gladly take 1080p 60 fps over this .

I like 60fps, but I want to play Starfield. So it had better be a solid 30fps then. Another thought I have is that I don’t like the idea of setting a precedent of 30fps to be the main go to. I really admit that I am spoiled with 60fps anymore. My final thought is that I am glad they just told us now so no one got their hopes up when a 60fps mode was shelved at the last minute.

Disappointing to say the least. I’m sure this following Redfall will be more bad press for Xbox and will dampen the excitement from the show.

Honestly I'm thrilled with a locked 1440/30 on Series S. Was expecting 1080.

@Suda52 Xbox cut their own throat with that statement and they deserve the criticism for over hyping the Series X.

@Hi-Fi-Flush You’re right, it’s entirely unreasonable for gamers to want 60fps. I have no clue why they would want the option to pick frame rate over fidelity. I’m glad the box of my Xbox says up to 120fps and 8K and here we were crawling along at 30fps.

Ewe. When they said cinematic I knew it, forced rtx. The game looks great and all but that kills a majority of hype for me. 30fps simply doesn't work well on many displays and mine is one of them. It's not that it's slow it's that it literally flickers back and forth oscillating.

@SplooshDmg Honestly Zelda fps bothers me a lot. Everything judders back and forth on my ips. And then I realized it also does on swoled. I dragged out the launch switch just to play in a screen slow enough to not judder back and forth on and that's the only way I'll touch it.

Just means the top two contenders for GoTY, Tears of the Kingdom and Starfield, will be 30 FPS games. Fine with me.

Bottom line: if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Don’t tell other people what they can or can’t enjoy.

@UltimateOtaku91 to be fair Redfall was shown at 60fps every time it as shown. The preview that has those YouTubers go to was in 60 as well. And it was on the box. This was never promised to be 60.

@NEStalgia 100 hours or so later, I've just gotten used to it, I guess. I mean, it's better than XC2, I think?

Can’t wait for this game. What a masterpiece we are in store for. Who gives an eff about 60 fps. Chill out dudes.

@Hi-Fi-Flush That’s my point…lol. The box says that they can do up to that, and we are getting 30fps. Taking shots at people who are disappointed that it’s 30fps is crap in my opinion. You should stop whining and crying about people wanting 60fps.

Oh no! Ohhhhhh noooooooooo!

90% gamers in the world will not be able to see or play this game due to graphics now. Since their God level retinas are unable decipher any game that is under 60fps.

Starfield is doooooooooomed

Shame but as long as the game sticks to that i can put up with it especially as the games scale is beyond massive.

@VisitingComet1 Nope. Not at all. You are just a sensible, normal, rational, intelligent gamer. That's all.

@Hi-Fi-Flush MS isn’t the one in the comments whining that people want 60fps.

@SplooshDmg Wait.... Wait..... Wait.... Wait?

Gamers played a game below 60 fps? How is that possible? 90% gamers today are unable to decipher anything below 60 fps. It's like a blank screen to them.

Please find me a quote from Xbox that says ALL games will play 60 FPS or higher. You won’t find one because there isn’t one.

It's a single-player game, I'm not too fussed about it.

For context, Tears of the Kingdom has a dynamic resolution between 720 and 900P and runs between 20 and 30 FPS... and a lot of people still enjoy that game.

@Hi-Fi-Flush Lol. Have a good one, man. My sarcasm and comments aren’t catching on with ya.

30 fps or 60 fps. Who cares? Play the game and enjoy it. Have gamers not played a game in their life not 60 fps? Gone to a movie? 30 fps or less is VAST majority of EVERYTHING we see for our entertainment. Wonder if mod will delete this comment, even though I'm making an actual intelligent contribution?

@GuyinPA75 People would shudder to think that I just chose to play the new Ratchet and Clank in the 30fps Fidelity mode. I know, it's sounds crazy, I'm a real mad man. But really, I think most games should have options, because most games are plenty capable of it. I'm pretty convinced Starfield is an exception, though, because the scope of the game is just colossal. However, a game only being playable in 30fps or maybe even lower, won't stop me from playing it if it's something I'm surely going to enjoy.

There is one thing I despise, its a dev bullbleeping me with that whole "uhhh we dont want to sacrifice fidelity... soh.... yea... 30fps"...

Look, if your engine cant handle 1080p 60 on series X because of physics or some other tech issue, tell me that, but don't f[bleep] condescending tell me that its because you don't want to sacrifice fidelity, because if that is the reason, then you are simply wrong!

I'll likely wait until the inevitable mod that enables 60fps is released, or might play it on PC where I will be able to change the "fidelity" against Todd's best wishes.

Kind of funny how John Linneman from Digital Foundry, who makes a living looking at things like frame rate, actually said he’d even understand if Starfield dipped BELOW 30 FPS because it’s so gigantic.

But you know, everyone here has more expertise than he does.

https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1667961522746798080?s=46&t=n557V_EC4EqditJsSEbq1A

@Suda52 I'm not being sarcastic or trolling you. Just being honest with this. Do you have a job? Live life? EVERYTHING is a lie today. Your employer, politicians, big pharma, your are told heck out more lies than truth today. It's sad. It's not right. But it is the norm today and it is not to ever going to change now.

As long as it is great who cares? I for one love the cinematic feel of 30fps and believe it suits this game.

@SplooshDmg

Zelda reminded everyone we don't care if it's runs at 22fps IF it's a certified banger.

The difference is Zelda is not a first person shooter. And no, playing on third person does not change the fact it's still a shooter.

Playing an FPS on my TV at 30fps is extremely jarring. Every slight turn will shift the camera that is always focused on the furthest horizon. While playing a third person adventure game like Zelda, the camera is way less often aimed in an angle that makes it that jarring. Your character doing a slight turn wont necessarily turn the camera, and rather often the camera is likely to be pointed somewhat downwards instead of looking at a far-away horizon that moves 3 inches in your screen when you turn it left by a simple tap.

I really want to play this game, and I would love to play it on my XBox, but with this info... I'll likely play it on PC, and if I need to set it at 720p to get 60fps, you can bet I'll do that.

No surprise here given Bethesda’s physics engine dies if you go even slightly over 60.

@NEStalgia Do you watch TV or movies or go to the movies? Vast majority of those are 30 fps or less. Who cares if a game is 30 fps.

@awp69 How does this apply to people being disappointed it’s not 60fps? It appears you’re suggesting that the game is so big it cannot be 60fps, which is fine, but that doesn’t negate that people were hoping for it.

Everything is so polarized. If people are disappointed that it’s not 60fps they get ridiculed here.

@Tharsman I mean, you don't have to explain to me. I'm being a bit tongue in cheek when I say that. I put a 3080ti in my PC last year specifically because I just knew Starfield was going to be 30fps on consoles. I'll play any 3rd person game in 30fps, no question. 1st person I genuinely prefer 60.

Play how you want where you want
So much for giving options to players..

I was expecting it to be 30 fps so I’m not disappointed. Sorry for all those that got their hopes up for 60 fps. Still looks like great game though.

@Suda52 Lies have been around since dawn of time. So unless you build a time machine or plan on deleting yourself you are going have life with it. Again, I'm not saying it's right. But it's a fact and will always be the norm.

@Tharsman Do you watch movies on your TV or in the theater?

@SplooshDmg just explaining why its not the same in an FPS than in Zelda. Honestly, right now I'm mostly angry at the statement. I know I'll be able to configure my laptop with some setting that will allow me to play most of the time at 60fps, regardless how low of a setting minimum I have to go to.

It upsets me that the statement is simply "we refuse to give console players access to a low-quality-high-framerate setting, because I have a vision of high fidelity!" Imagine if he tried to say the same to PC players! Imagine if he said that the game was locked at 30fps on PC because he wanted to force everyone to experience it on the highest possible resolution their card can render?

That is what annoys me.

Another thing that has me a "bit" irked... this is a Bethesda game, we know there will be mod support, even for consoles (hopefully at launch). Via mods, we will likely be able to remove the fps cap and maybe even lower resolution... but enabling mods on Bethesda games always result in blocking the acquisition of achievements. So... ugh.... hopefully the PC version has cross-save so I can eventually just play on console when/if I'm done with achievements.

@Hrommar different people have different tastes, do you lash on color blinded for hating games with no color blind option?
I gave up on loads of games because I just can't enjoy or get into 30fps, plague tale, Dishonored 2, witcher 3 before the update, you name it
And for god sake almost all the games eventually got a 60fps mode after which I sinked into it with all the fun they have to offer
I'm willing to byecot games to push for color blind option, why can't others at least lash against lack of 60 fps mode when a great number of gamers can't even play the game without it? It's an option, why can't we have the option for 60fps and lower graphics? Heck i would tale 1080 over 4k for a 60 fps mode

Disappointing but not surprising. Not necessarily a deal breaker though as the combat definitely isn't the main attraction of a game like this.

@Hi-Fi-Flush it's not entitlement to have preferences. They don't owe my 60fps but I also don't owe them my time and money.

Instead we get lashed at for saying "unavailability of 60fps mode is unacceptable"

@Hrommar everything you said could be copy and pasted replacing “60fps” with “4k” and make the exact same amount of sense.

People who think they can just turn down the resolution or graphics settings to get a higher framerate here don't understand, this is a CPU issue. This is a Bethesda systems driven RPG, it's going to be insanely CPU intensive at times. If you want to play everything at 60 or 120fps, just play linear cinematic action adventure games on Playstation, they crank out exactly the kind of simple games you'll love.

@Hi-Fi-Flush I don't understand the antagonism in your response. I hope you do have fun playing it. There is a lot about that game that looks amazing and I would love to see XBox get a W. For me, I really only care about action gameplay and just don't think a shooter at 30fps will be great for me personally. It's not an attack on you or even Starfield. It's just a personal preference.

I'm extremely lucky. I use motion smoothing on my TV and it makes it look/feel like 60. It gives most people headaches though, I'm told. I can't tell the difference between true 60 & 30 w/ Samsung motion plus, and I don't get the headaches.

@Jenkinss

People who think they can just turn down the resolution or graphics settings to get a higher framerate here don't understand

Oh, I 100% understand that can be the case. But that is not what they told us. They said the reason is they don't want to sacrifice the 4k fidelity. I would be way less annoyed if they actually stated the physics engine or something else was too much for the Series X|S CPU to handle at a consistent 60fps. I still would just play it on PC, but I would feel less annoyed.

@SplooshDmg To me it's unplayable on my main screen with the flashing. It's just just flicker, it oscillates edges back and forth several inches, like an evil Flipbook. Swoled does it too, not as pronounced because it's smaller. Og switch or lite is the only way around it.

@Tharsman it's because of the mandatory rtx global illumination. That's the whole thing breaking 60fps. It's extremely disappointing. Back to nms vr I guess....

So many fuming PS fanboys talking down the show and Starfield being 30 fps. A delightful sight, to be sure. I will be playing in 1440p/60 on my 3070 PC but I would have zero issues with 4K/30 or even 1440p on Xbox. 90% of gamers will just enjoy the game instead of Digital Foundry style dissection of it that has become a plague these days.

@NEStalgia A feature I will likely disable on PC... talking about that... @FraserG @Kezelpaso any word on recommended PC specs?

@NEStalgia I'll take your word for it, because I have never ever encountered such a thing. Really though, I like 60fps as much as the next guy. Which is WHY I bought the PC I did. Obviously it's pretty important to me, but I'm also not going to not play a game because it isn't 60fps. I don't care that much.

I'm always 100% fine with 4k/30! Game play looked amazing, so I'm cool with it.

@gollumb82 Or disappointed Xbox folks like myself.

@Realist
If such things ruin games for you then I don't know what to tell you. It's inevitable with consoles and even my rig (Ryzen 7, 32GB of RAM, RTX 3070) will be barely enough for Phantom Liberty at 1080p/60/high. Ever since Covid has ended hardware specs seem to have skyrocketed.

If this game did run at 1080/60 the exact same arguments would be made. Most powerful console, Greenberg said 4k, 12 t-flops etc lmao.

Redfall is a 1st person shooter, no comparison to Starfield and Zelda is a very large open world running on a tablet, again no comparison.

@gollumb82 Didnt say it would ruin anything. Its just disappointing.

Woah that's embarrassing no 60fps option on series x it's 2023 this is an xbox 1st party studio as well ok people should have the option. anyway I'll play it either way but it's not a great look I'm just wondering if this is down to the series s not being powerful enough so that's why Microsoft won't put the 60fps option In for series x ?

Can’t be too upset. It’s Todd Howard’s choice and he’s been clear for years that his goal is to push the most detailed and interactive world you can experience. Performance just isn’t that big of a deal to him, as long as the game runs at a level it can still be immersive.

@NEStalgia I can’t tell you how many times I have been made fun of and mocked on here and other sites saying we need a Ps5 Pro and Series X Pro. No no, this console cycle hasn’t even started, we don’t even know what the can put out yet. Question friend, an honest one at that, when has this hobby never not been a pay for what you want industry? You want 60fps, pro model, you want ray tracing, pro model. I have benn telling people this gen and last is more the same than what they want to remind me of. Well last gen those specs were for 1080P and everyone bought a 4K tv so the X and Pro was needed. True, but you had to pay for performance and this gen is no different. Pro models are coming in 2024, and Starfield will be 60 on the Xbox pro. Honestly i knew this was 30 the moment it was announced, but i didn’t want to get people mad at me online. Howard’s design practices and the actual power of these consoles was a dead give away.

@Green-Bandit I bet if we get a Pro Series X, Todd would simply insist to increase the resolution to 4k instead of allowing higher frame rate.

lazy devs or modern studios forcing devs to go fast?

Why no variable refresh rate ? Why no 40 fps for 120Hz TVs ?

@Tharsman i mean i can’t speak to that and you may not be wrong, but what i do know is going forward console players will not have everything they desire on a base system after launch. There will be more powerful consoles to pay for extra performance and i am ok with that. Trade in the base and pay a little out of pocket to increase performance seems fine with me. Still not sure why people that speak facts and not feelings get blasted. I don’t make the rules 😀

@GuyinPA75 Film is 24fps. However, cinematographers know to slow pan deliberately to manage the frame rate and visual clarity. The slow pan makes it work. If we start locking video game rotation rates to take a full 10 seconds to turn 360 degrees with limited to no y axis skew, then we're comparing apples to apples.

@SplooshDmg It's screen dependent. 30 never bothered me once in my old crummy budget screen. I argued with banjo that fh4 was way better at 4k30. Once I got my new one I didn't understand what was wrong with some games until I figured it out. What's why I think a 60fps mode should be mandatory for modern console games. It's a hardware conflict more than just preference for chunks of the market.

Have to say I am disappointed in there being no option for a performance mode being offered. People want the choice and they should be giving that instead of admiring 'fidelity' at 30FPS.

@Green-Bandit We do not need 'Pro' model consoles, what is the point when not one single game, including Starfield is utilising all the power available and hardware techniques being offered, VRR? VRS? Etc. the fully suite of RDNA2 that Xbox Series supports? Pro model consoles just means an excuse to charge a higher price and allow devs to be more lazy and push games out faster. IMO.

1440p at 30fps on series s. That's great. Much better than I hoped for. Can't wait to play this.

It was so obvious a massive game like this was gonna be 30fps. Its going to be amazing and everyone knows it, and sure, the agents of negativity will try to use this as a fix for their inane need to negate all positive news, but I say just click on ignore. Honestly, everyone should ignore them. Let them talk among themselves as they try to cope with xbox being home to what's going to be one of the best, most legendary games of our time. Let's jot forget Sony tried to buy a year exclusivity.

This game is everything I wanted it to be, and more. Beyond excited

I feel sorry for those individuals (including those on here) who live in a world where they deny there is any difference between 30fps and 60fps. Respectfully, I suggest you book yourself a slot at Specsavers.

I’d much prefer 1440p 60fps (or even 1080p 60fps) on my Series X but I’m happy to try on Gamepass and really hope it is great game.

some people really don't understand 'target' and 'norm'

tldr
it doesn't mean EVERY game will have that spec.

I am very disappointed by this. I have come to really value the way games feel to play at a higher frame rate. I submit myself to be pelted with rotten fruit and branded 'entitled.'

I tried to tell everyone that a game the size and scope, and with the very many systems would not be 60fps on a £450 console. You don't get a game this big if you aim for 60fps

Okay, now that's settled, I'm abandoning the Xbox and building a gaming PC, never intending to humiliate my eyes with 30fps again.

If it hits 60 sometimes, can they work on a 40fps option for 120Hz TVs/monitors? They are becoming more and more common and it makes a massive difference (just look at Plague Tale Requiem).

30fps (Series S) didn't spoil my enjoyment of A Plague Tale Requiem so it's all good. That Starfield presentation was very impressive.

It'll be fine at 30fps until you need to shoot something. That's when things start to feel bad.

Unacceptable. Why not have the choice for 1080p 60fps on SX?

What a joke.

!no more 30fps from a Xbox Game Studio!

Disappointing but I’ll still play as it looks great. Hopefully they’ll add 60 in at some point.

I'm perfectly fine with this.

Well it looked amazing but when the camera moved about, sometimes the frame rate looked iffy to me. How it feels will be my decider

Doesn't bother me. Thankfully I barely notice any difference between 30 and 60 fps. Once the game is fun to play I'm happy.

@Thenewguy most people are. The average gamer who just buys and plays games without going on forums and message boards likely doesn't care.

@NeutronBomb

I do exactly this on my LG CX. It’s insane how good this works. I’m playing Tears of the Kingdom in what feels like 60FPS. Running with the Pro UI mode, and the game looks and feels amazing.

I played Horizon Forbiden West, Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding the same way. All felt like 60 FPS. It’s an overlooked feature by many people.

The only downside is that with some games.. the UI has problems with this. But a dynamic UI solves most of these problems.

If Starfield wil get an dynamic UI, we’re solid.

I notice a lot of the folk saying “not a problem” and saying here comes the faux backlash - didn’t leap to the defence of Gotham Knights. Which was a very decent game that suffered horrendous press due to 30fps. I guess to get the online defence league you need to be Xbox studios these days.

On the FPS - won’t make any difference to me. As long as it plays well

@GuyinPA75 Movies at 24Hz are tolerable due to the limited number of quick-pan shots (if any). In many games, the player is constantly moving the camera, which is why a higher FPS is preferred. 30Hz is not too bad for an RPG, but I do hope Bethesda release a 40Hz option.

@Zoidpilot4 You seem to have a serious problem with people having a different opinion than you.

I was expecting to play this at 30fps since i only have a Series S but surprised there's not a 60fps option on the Series X. Still looks amazing and I'll still play day one.

Can't wait to play this game, it looks incredible. I do wish there was a 1440p 60FPS mode for Series X though. Would take smoother gameplay over resolution any day.

I'm sure it'll still be great but I don't quite get why they can't lock a lower resolution at 60FPS if they're claiming it is well above 30FPS at 4k.

If they could at least add a 40fps mode for 120hz panels, that would a great. The games looks great otherwise and I am happy with it.

Perhaps this gives some validity to those 2024 mid gen revision rumours.

Glad I didn't buy a console for this lol. I'll be playing at 60fps with drops like God intended.

@NEStalgia I'm starting to think you have a medical issue. TotK looks fine on my SWOLED. It also looks surprisingly good on my 4K OLED (for a Switch game, anyway).

I'm an old school gamer, my eyes are fixed at 30fps due to the amount of TV and gaming I have seen over the years. Anything over that makes me nauseous.

I'm still gonna get it, just hope it's a fun game to play to move pass it.

Shame, but expected.
Good job Motorsport should be locked at 60hz as this and Redfall being 30fps doesn't fit the 'most powerful console' narrative.
I'll try it on Series X and see how much judder I notice. I'm not keen on playing on PC, but I do have a powerful rig with a 3090, so I can always play there if I need better frame rate.

Frame rate aside, what's really important is that they seem to be delivering on many of the promises made, and this could well be a masterpiece. I'm certainly hoping for that

We don't want to sacrifice any of it.

You don't have to. You can add an optional 1080p 60fps mode for those that prefer or even need that. My TV upscales from 1080p to 4K wonderfully. You can also add an unlocked frame rate mode for VRR screens (like mine). Why not settings like the PC version? Didn't you say that this game has been 25 years in the making?

@NEStalgia That's correct. The frame rate of Tears of the Kingdom is almost unbearable. The game is a brown mess. It has nothing to do with the beautiful and smooth trailers. But it's Nintendo so no one will complain.

Playing tears of the Kingdom right now and the game is beautiful and plays just fine so I think Starfield will be good at these settings.

I'll wait until the Anniversary Edition releases on the Xbox Series Z to play it at 60fps.

@NEStalgia zelda looks fine on my oled at 30fps. It's an lg c2 65"

@NEStalgia Can I be devils advocate and suggest that if 30fps is breaking this new display that bad, that maybe the dumpy budget display was kind of... A better display.

I dunno. My brand new QLED set works fine. Our OLED set works fine. Zelda just runs somewhat poorly, but I'm really, really just fine with it. But again, I can tolerate a 1st person game at 30, I did it for years, but today I'm not going to tell you I'm wild about it, which is why I took out a second mortgage and gave Nvidia some money. But you are right about the camera panning. Those quick turns in 1st person games are a lot more yucky that a slower camera pan in 3rd person. There's just no reality where I own a box capable of playing Starfield in some capacity and I don't find a way to make it work.

@Ralizah We did it! We predicted the future! My obnoxious graphics card has now been proven necessary! Take that buyers remorse!

My hope lies in mods. Else I will likely throw 2k at a new PC.

@S1ayeR74 The point is i can get a performance mode and better frame rates and better textures etc etc. By late 2024 Pro consoles will make more sense and the good thing is no one that don’t want to buy them don’t have too. The base model is there for them at no extra charge. But rumors of PS5 pro are saying it’s twice as power as the base PS5. I will gladly sell my base and pay the difference. I would love Diablo 4 running at top specs and 120 on a Series X pro like it does on PC ultra setting’s 😀

@StylesT More like queue, most powerful games console ever created, and, games do not utilise all the power of new consoles yet still, VRS is hardly used, VRR isn’t in every game, RDNA2 feature set isn’t used to its fullest.

Devs are lazy, including first party ones with supposedly full backing and support from Microsoft Xbox design engineers and programmers, to cost of other games such as Redfall, and they still only offer the game at 30FPS, no 60FPS mode.

@Ralizah It's not as pronounced on the swoled screen as the monitor, but I was kind of shocked to see the same issue. Just turn quickly and watch the edge of any cliff, mountain, etc. It flickers. Not just flickers, it actually oscillates - on the bigger screen it's up to inches, on the handheld it's of course a few mm, but the edge, while you're turning, rapidly flashes, or jumps, back and forth, flickering. Its' any 30fps game on my screen, and I'm sure also on the swoled, I just haven't really played enough third/first person games on it to have realised it before, though I didn't notice it on XC3 but do on TotK. It's of course significantly worse on the bigger screen.

Would be great to get this game at 60fps, but from what I seen ... i'm taking it.

@Green-Bandit I'm actually still against Pro consoles. We're not talking about people that want things prettier, or people that want rtx having an option of more power. We're talking about the foundational basics of motion not working right without a pro console, and selling a new $600+ box to replace your 3 year old $500 box to do what the marketing for the $500 box told you it was supposed to do, and can do, from the start. Releasing a pro console is basically a "we lied, please rebuy" statement.

It should be mandatory every game has a 60fps mode, full stop, on these consoles. If that means games look like PS3 games in that mode, so be it. If they want to sell pro consoles so 60fps modes can run at higher details or rtx so be it. But it should be a platform requirement to have 60fps. Starfield is being cripped by a design decision to require global illumination (rtx) when on these GPUs rtx just doesn't work very well. If that wasn't required it's much more likely they could have dropped res and done 60fps, but on these GPUs rtx doesn't work very well and is more of a gimmick. The fact that we're at the first major exclusive and it's requiring rtx, and sacrificing motion to do it, and the solution is then "oh, sorry, can you rebuy your console please?" is just wrong in every way.

I wanted out of the costs and frustration of PCs long ago, but I'm really starting to wonder why I bought $1000 of consoles to be told on the first major exclusive drops that I should buy another $1200+ of consoles when if I spent $2000 on a PC 3 years ago I'd be in the same place only better.

Plague Tale Requiem was the last game I lowered my standards down to 30fps for a new game, and I likely won’t be doing it again. I only go down to 30fps for games that I have nostalgia for now.

If this game happens to get exceptional reviews, I’ll wait for a performance mode patch before playing it.

@SplooshDmg For 30fps the dumpy display was better because it has such a slow refresh that it basically adds motion blur to everything, smoothing out the flashes. Which most LCDs used to do. Which is why 30fps worked between the demise of CRT and now.

But new screens don't do that, they have fast refreshes, and they use tricks to push the refresh. I honestly don't know why the back and forth oscillation exists. I don't think that's the display itself, it cant project an image past the rendering point and then back before it....that has to be something about the video buffers on the console outputs themselves or the engines, since it happens on the SWOLED in handheld, it's nothing to do with the HDMI chain, it's purely the graphics output.

They will patch a performance mode eventually. Just whether you can be bothered to wait or not.

I just read Todd's reasoning and if the game really does run at an inconsistent near 60fps they should have given us a VRR mode as opposed to a performance mode and note for the player that if they choose that mode but do not have VRR their experience will be sub optimal.

With VRR I had none of the problems that plagued other people's experience with games like Star Wars Survivor. Let me have that option and I will be happy to play the game at 48fps or whatever it can manage.

I've never been one to cut my nose off despite the face... 30fps is fine with me and I'll be playing regardless.

30fps does not bother me in the slightest when it comes to this game. If it’s as massive as Bethesda and crew are saying, I find it nearly impossible to have it running at 60fps.

To be honest, I haven’t been sold on the game at all, or even slightly interested in it, until now. That was possibly one of the best (singular) video game showcases I’ve ever seen.

@NEStalgia I mean, I know that. OLED's are allegedly something like 1000x faster than an LED. I'm just saying that even on my LG OLED, I've never seen what you're talking about. I'm not saying I don't believe you, but I just have never experienced anything similar to what you're talking about on hardware new or old. I'm also not sure I care as much as you. This is a personal thing, and I appreciate that it is. Which is why I'm a champion of options, but sometimes circumstances maybe don't always allow for those options.

To your point about Pro consoles, if this really is as CPU limited as DF is suggesting, then a Pro console probably wouldn't change the framerate because the CPU's in consoles aren't going scale well and it'd probably just have nearly thr same CPU. A newer Xbox would probably only have an upgraded GPU, similar to the Xbone X. So, really I'm not sure an XSX Pro would solve this issue, if the issue is what we think it is.

@NEStalgia i understand your concerns and i am not sure we have been lied to yet. As Bethesda is a 30fps condenser. It’s been their design language under Todd for decades. But Gears 6 and the hopeful Quake reboot etc etc , i want 60 min and would pay to have an option at 120. Since our TV’s support that. I see your point in just moving from one expensive box to the next, that becomes very PC like. I respect anyone not wanting that headache, but for me i kinda want a console every 3-4 years growing in power. Say Base PS5 for 3-4 years PS5 Pro for 3-4 year and then PS6, so on so on. So i am getting more power and scaling up every 3-4 years on console would work for me. But i understand not everyone wants that on console and i agree with you they should say what the console is going to do from the start only to ask for more money on a more powerful box to deliver said promise. I do happen to think SF looked far better than i expected and the game is deep and should have players enjoying it for years and years. But the show left me wanting to see more gameplay from other titles and i would love to be a fly on the wall and know if they will be 4K 60.

@RBRTMNZ Bye bye 👋

@SplooshDmg i would say let’s wait and see Sony’s rumored PS5 pro specs are coming in at double the overall power of the base. If i have read that right and pieced together the info around it. There was even a PS5 pro rumor of dual CPU’s and GPU’s, that might be a big pipe dream, but it was said to target 8K. So the rumors are all over the place at the moment. But as DF has stated it’s the CPU that will need some extra horsepower. Time will tell, I believe if they are coming we will start to see and hear much more about them in early 2024.😊

@FatalBubbles I get wanting 60fps; I think we would all want that. And I also get the false marketing on the box of the Series X. With that said, every console will have its limitations, and so will the games.

We are talking about a Bethesda game. They create incredible worlds with a lot of scope and depth. Starfield is going to seemingly be bigger than every mainline Bethesda game combined. And not only in size, but also quests, settlements, ships, companions, quests, and “1000 planets” to explore. Something had to give, and if that’s 60fps then so be it. And if it is bothersome to you, feel free to try and make a video game of your own on this level of scale and have it be 60fps.

I don’t expect miracles, but I guess other people do. If this game runs smoothly right out of the gate, I think the argument about 30fps and 60fps for this game in particular will be irrelevant.

@BlackMayge I'm not attacking you nor am I even attacking Starfield. I'm simply stating personal preferences. You should really reflect on why this is so offensive to you because being so bothered by other people not wanting to play the game you're excited about is not healthy.

@RBRTMNZ I’m perfectly fine — I just said bye. If you don’t want to play this game then okay, cya later. If you’re taking offense to that, then perhaps you’re reading too much into things.

@NEStalgia And in action sequences or fight scenes they do speed camera pan up. Therefore, apples to apples.

Adjust controller and input acceleration sensitivity for game camera, etc. Apples to apples.

I've said it before on this site, the 60fps try hards are the video game equivalent of, "Oh I only eat vegan".

@Kraven I particularly enjoy the comment about me making a game which has zero relevance.

Phil Spencer said this was a creative decision so I question the “this is so big it can’t do 60fps narrative”. Making 1000 planets where most are barren and have only resources to gather isn’t exactly a compelling argument to make a game bigger and reduce frame rate to me.

I hope that the game is slow enough to not have 30fps be an issue.

These consoles were promised to have games run at 120fps along with Ray Tracing, etc....

None of that seems to have come to fruition.

@Thumper Can always adjust controller and controller acceleration settings in game.

How did gamers play games years ago when everything was 30 fps or less? They just suddenly go like, oh wow games are 60 fps. Cool. My eyes can register the images now. The screen was always blank to me when 30 fps. I couldn't see anything. It's like I picked up pair sunglasses from They Live.

@Green-Bandit I'm not buying those rumors for a second. Dual CPU's makes little to no sense whatsoever. In a sense they already have multiple CPUs because they are running CPUs with 8x cores. They aren't going to change the fundamental design philosophy of a console midway through a generation. AMD is currently into Zen 4 and these consoles are loaded with Zen 2. There's plenty of room already for a simple upgrade, if it's economical and doesn't create nightmares for dev teams. Sony went through their phase of doing silly things with CPUs and they learned a harsh lesson from it.

@Green-Bandit Seems you just want something new and shiny to blow money on, and are making excuses for it to exist. I’d rather devs did their jobs properly and optimised games properly, it then we live in the age of throwing a game out half done, patch it up later, so shouldn’t expect any of them to optimise games properly for the hardware they run on.

@GuyinPA75 60fps was actually the norm during the PS2 days, most things ran at 60. It was the PS3/360 gen where 30 became standard, mainly due to consumer demand for graphical fidelity over performance.

@S1ayeR74 I'm just not convinced that Starfield isn't optimized. If anything, it seems TOO polished for a Bethesda game. We saw with Flight Simulator that 60fps on consoles just isn't happening. It can hit 60fps in open areas, but the second you hit a populated area the framerate just chugs. I kind of imagine it's the same story for this game. Massive scale is the killer of framerates, and this is massive in scale. I've been saying it for years now, to the point I upgraded my PC just for this game and I apparently wasn't wrong to.

@Green-Bandit The 3-4 years cycle is grotesque, the hardware is a rental at best at that time scale, and it's why I got out of PC. By the time you can find it, and it's affordable, it's only months until it's obsolete. Nothing fun about that. That's the best argument I've ever heard to just get rid of consoles entirely and go to cloud, latency and all, as the only option, IMO. The hardware becomes their problem, not yours, and you didn't really own anything either way .

@GuyinPA75 And that also goes through substantial post-processing on the editing floor to smooth out that motion, including frame blending. Computer graphics can not be compared to cinematography. The pipeline is completely different. We could have AI do what post does for film if we're willing to accept a massive latency injection. Or even use video processing equipment for home theater on the output, again, at the cost of massive latency injection.

@SplooshDmg I'd tell you the sure fire things to look for to see it, but I'm actually not going to. Once you see it you can not unsee it and I don't want to ruin it for you, it will be thorn in your brain forever more after that.

If you're right and it's CPU-bound though, that's either a poor testament to the CPU sin the new consoles, or a poor testament to Creation engine's use of modern CPUs.

Are you sure that PC will it 60 with this either? This is Todd...

@NEStalgia Bear in mind, I'm an aspie. Mentally torturing myself through over analysis is my specialty.

I'm actually skeptical about how most PC's will handle this even. Sure, super high-end CPUs will have no issue. However, the recommended CPU listed on Steam right now is a Ryzen 5 3600x, which is a shade slower than what is loaded in the current consoles. This also does not specify the settings that hardware is targeting, so it's not particularly useful information. I kinda suspect the game will support stuff like FSR and DLSS though. My PC only has a Ryzen 3700x, which is pretty equivalent to the consoles, but my board could take a Ryzen 5900x. I'll upgrade it if I absolutely need to. A 5800x usually only runs like $200 right now.

@SplooshDmg Massive scale whilst trying to create lifelike graphics with ray tracing is the killer. I await Unreal Engine 5 games to see how they perform.

@Kraven Are you new to the internet and don't understand that your initial response to me is super edgelord or are you now just trying to pull the whole "I'm not mad, I'm just cutting onions, actually you're the one who is mad" thing that people do when they're called out for being overly emotional about nothing?

@S1ayeR74 Unreal Engine behaves nothing like Bethesda's engine though. Creation Engine handles scripting in a way that very few engines do. People can take shots at Creation Engine for being rickety or whatever, but the engine does things that Bethesda needs it to do, that aren't just options with a licensed engine like UE. Creation uses a scripting language called Papyrus that is an object-oriented scripting language. It allows for the tracking of all the variables that make Bethesda games Bethesda games. Developers choose to use proprietary engines for a reason, often because a licensed engine is a one size fits most solution, and that engine might not fit the ambitions for their game. Unreal Engine is the biggest flaw of The Outer Worlds. The game was great, but it felt absolutely shallow compared to New Vegas, and the difference was the lack of Creation Engine.

@RBRTMNZ Again, no. You said you won’t play the game, so I said bye. It’s pretty cut and dry.

I've Not read the other comments, sorry guys, too many and I am supposed to be working!

My thoughts:

1) I am OK with this, they are making out like this is a locked 30FPS, OK locked 30 evenly paced with good motion blur, absolutely fine.

2) However, if indeed the frame rate has gone above 30FPS during testing then how about a 120hz 40fps mode?

3) How about a mode that relies on VRR with perhaps a lowered resolution? Achieving 40 – 60FPS, but more towards the top of this range. This may play well too.

Point 2 and 3 could be added post launch, and I feel they just might be.

Overall as in point 1 above, its fine, but particularly that 120hz mode, well it should be a standard in all 30fps games now really.

@SplooshDmg yeah i agree those rumors seem to be pushing numbers and specs vs practical coding. No way Sony would spilt the development into two separate parts. I am just sharing some of what has been throw around, and the dual CPU and GPU was the first rumor of a pro i ever seen. Haven’t seen any more like that in a long time. Have heard some saying it is for sure in the works and even a rumor of it launching alongside the rumored Switch 2 in holiday 2024. I don’t know, this is all i have to work with at the moment, but i am sure Sony and MS is hard at work on what’s next, be it a Pro or next gen. 😀

"At the time of writing, no performance mode has been mentioned...."
it's a joke, right ? this game is NOT and adventure game or a tactical RPG !! I'm mad about this news : do we have "nextgen" consoles... or do we have Xbox one 1.5 console ?

@S1ayeR74 you are half right in that i don’t mind having new hardware to spend money on and enjoy the gains. I am financially lucky enough to have high end gear and always want the latest and greatest specs and power. But you’d be wrong to imply i am making excuses for any developer. However it is their project and they are allowed to design around 30fps for whatever reasons they seem fit. I was on record in 2020 saying i didn’t think the PS5 and Series X could do 4K 60 across the board. It’s easy to do in the beginning with porting PS4 and Xbox One titles. But as the gen moved on, i said i think Xbox should have targeted the X at 1440P 60fps, and the S at 1080P 60. Those seem like reasonable goals with the hardware, most gamers fail to understand how much it taxes the system at running 4K. Most PC players were happy building 1440P machines with all the extra going into high frame rates. It’s a sweet spot of visuals and performance, but it’s harder to market 1440P than 4K. I would love to see Pro consoles in 2024 or 2025, and for those not wanting to spend money on shiny things can comfortably keep their base models. Pro consoles are sort of like the physical vs Digital debates online, it’s always got to be one or the other, not both co existing for those that prefer choice. Gamers are quick to take away choices and make their way seem the only solution for millions upon millions of gamers.

@johndoe89 come on now, the game is massive and in 4k, will look fantastic, it's 5 games in 1 basically, lets all enjoy it dude. Chill!

@Green-Bandit Tom Henderson, who is a pretty reliable leaker, and maybe possibly even The Snitch, has good info and he's the one really reporting on the PS5 PRo. However, Phil is on record just today saying there won't be a mid gen upgrade from Xbox.

Phil Spencer says he doesn't feel an imperative to release an Xbox with a major upgrade in mid-cycle

“That’s not the feedback we’re getting right now. Right now, we’re pretty set on the hardware we have.”

So, who knows, really. It could be done as easily as just slapping a more powerful GPU in there and calling it a day. However, it does create a new SKU for devs to optimize for and Sony's advantage this gen seems to be less SKUs to optimize for.

@NEStalgia well now that is a good point i didn’t take into consideration, heck it will take me a year just to find the new hardware in stores. But that would be a me problem if i am chasing the power cycle vs just sticking to the base consoles. But i see your point in that. The Apple fan in me just don’t need or want a PC, other than my work one that is issued to me. I also don’t want all the driver issues etc etc. i want all the power in a box that just works. Boy that makes me sound lazy and entitled haha, but seriously i don’t want the extra work that comes with the power on the PC side. Maybe i am trying to create a console market for me that others just don’t see usable. I can appreciate the feedback 😊

@Kraven Well then just so you know, the way I interpreted your comment is fully inline with internet discourse so if you didn't intend me to understand it is rude you should be more thoughtful in the future. But I think I did understand your true intent. Anyway, enjoy your game.

@SplooshDmg Thank you for that, that was good info Buddy. Wow that will be interesting to see if Sony is to release the Pro would MS give them back the power advantage and how much power would it really be? Interesting times as always in the battle of consoles.

This tells me that this is a last gen title. Missed opportunity to show off the Series S and X hardware. Sounds like the optimum way to play this game will be on PC.

@SplooshDmg I'm actually really really happy to hear Phil double down on that. He was on record pre launch saying he doesn't want to be in a situation where they need mid-gen pro models, and rather than backing down, I'm glad he's publicly sticking to that. Honestly it makes me feel better about the 30fps thing in general. Don't get me wrong I'm still against Bethesda doing that, but as a platform thing I'm happier with "this is our 2020 console, this is what we can do with this big game on it" versus "well that was 2020, this is now, upgrade or die."

Ironically, it's Phil that believes in generations in the end....

@Green-Bandit I'm still not actually convinced PS Pro is a thing. Like sploosh said it's one guy reporting it, and right now, only one guy reporting it. My theory: Sony and MS have prepped the R&D for a "pro" model "just in case" the other guy does it and they need it. Mutually assured destruction deterrents. Neither wants to use it, but if the other guy does it they're both prepared. Henderson probably picked up on the R&D for that and reported it as a done deal instead of a standby device. Much like Switch Pro.

Don't get me wrong, I won't be surprised if it happens, if PS is pushing the weird PS-locked 2 hour remote play device they'll push anything, but I just don't see the Pro model benefiting them. And while they were boasting in the 6moths of 4Pro of it exceeding expectations then it just sank like a rock after the early adopters got it, who then did like you and flooded the market with used base PS4s, cannibalizing sales, increasing dev/support costs, and ultimately was killed off in 2 years. The pro is a cash grab for enthusiasts which is their style, but not really a major strategic move. If MS is doubling down on not doing it, I'm not sure if they want to jump back into having 2 skus and 2 dev targets to fight a competitor they're not competing with.

@iplaygamesnstuff Last gen? They started development during the PS360 and announced it early in the PS4X1 cycle. This thing is GTAV-old, but with many coats of paint added. It's not a knock, it's totally understandable why it would take so long, but yeah, it's not the newest design under the hood and even if it were the Creation engine is still Gamebryo underneath and will forever be trapped to those limitations.

@NEStalgia Yeah, because of everything you stated as well as what I said. Yes, this is last gen.

@NEStalgia Thats a strong take, i can’t find any holes in that. Makes sense. The only thing i think you misses is the PS4 Pro sounding like you had an airplane taking off and landing in your living room. HAHA but yeah that makes sense to me and i would just add Sony is a hardware company so i could see them doing it before MS, cause Sony in my opinion likes to develop and brag on their hardware capabilities and designs. But i am not sure it makes sense here. Now could we only get Sony to make a Dual Sense slim and we have something worth talking about hahaha

@Green-Bandit LOL, yeah, the jet engine and the plastic stress creaking under heat....good times with the old Pro! And still far weaker than X1X. Even first party studios stopped really supporting the thing in a year.

But, yeah, I mean for MS, there's already the challenge of the S and the X. Two hardware targets, two certifications, it adds a lot of overhead and cost on the production end. But the goal there was seeing a very broad casual budget market. Sony right now doesn't need to deal with that. And the enthusiast market that wants it would have to produce so much extra revenue so as to justify the added costs and complexities on development. Moreso than the broad market casual appeal of the S does, made up purely of high spec enthusiasts. Personally I don't see the numbers adding up. It's a lot of headache across every software product just to scrape some extra money from enthusiasts who's business they already had anyway.

Now later in the gen there's more argument for it. But...later in the gen, there's a more real reason to debate if a "mid gen" or just moving toward a new gen makes more sense. There's also the Nintendo factor. They were a gen behind when they started and they're still rock solid holding the line with the launch hardware. I think they had a lot of lessons to teach the business about hardware and specs this gen.

@SplooshDmg It'll be nice to finally get some use out of my GPU. I bought it and then subsequently spent all my time playing Zelda!

But yeah, people were fooled by this extended post-covid cross-gen stretch into forgetting that the norm for a console generation is 30fps.

I'm absolutely fine with 30 FPS for an epic single-player experience.

@Ralizah I'm about 100 hours into TotK and I think I'm going to finally go mop up Ganondorf. I somehow have gotten sunk into Tokyo Mirage Session FE# Encore, as well. Pretty soon Pikmin 4 will be out and I'll surely get stuck on that for a while. I'll use my PC again someday. Right now, fuzzy Nintendo games are doing it for me.

I think this is the thing. I think a lot of current gen games will still offer 60fps, but I think we will see more and more that don't. A lot of these games entered development 5-6 years ago, long before consoles gamers at large were really clamoring for 60fps. Like a lot of actual devs have pointed out, 60fps usually has to be decided early in production. People were plenty happy playing 30fps at the time, but now the goal post has moved on a lot of these games that were already deep in development.

@SplooshDmg

However, Phil is on record just today saying there won't be a mid gen upgrade from Xbox.

That is not the quote I read. the quote was simply "Right now, we’re pretty set on the hardware we have"

That is not "there wont be one", that is basically an evasive "nothing to announce at this time".

@Tharsman Take it however you will. You can't conveniently leave out the "That’s not the feedback we’re getting right now." Even enthusiast sites like this aren't really clamoring for one, because no one even feels like this gen has really started yet. The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X were both handily outsold by base models last gen. There's not a particularly strong argument for why one really needs to happen, and I'm sure they know that. Not saying they won't, but I'm not really sure many people actually want one.

@SplooshDmg Not sure how "feedback we're getting right now" changes his response. If they are working on a pro model, development started just as the Xbox Series shipped, if not earlier.

The truth is no one at Xbox will acknowledge any plans until they actually announce the thing. Unless Phil comes out and actually says "we wont be having another console until the generation is over" I am hedging my bets they are internally working on a refresh and ready to launch it reactively if Sony announces theirs.

We also know from devs that the Switch "pro" was real, plenty of devs had dev kits, Nintendo simply opted the logistics didn't work out. Same can happen here, but I think its a very safe bet to say they have something baking and near ready if they feel they need it. Making a mid-gen (or new gen) console isn't something that happens overnight, not even within a year, after all.

Edit:
I feel I lost track of what I was trying to say: my point is he didn't deny they will make a mid-gen refresh. All he denied is they need it.

@Feffster Why be sorry for them? Maybe we should be jealous instead, as they can play their games on bargain-bin potatoes, and not be bothered at all by how these games run. It sure would save a lot of money!

@NEStalgia it’s been well documented that the Switch Oled was the Pro but with the chip shortages they canned the beefed up specs and just gave us the oled screen. If that is 100% true as some believe it to now be. Then i would be curious to see if Nintendo would be in the market to update their hardware if it falls to far behind, i am inclined to say HECK NO, that’s not the Nintendo way, on the others hand mobile processors get cheaper and more powerful every 3-4 years. It would almost insure them to stay in the profits while adding extra headroom for 3rd parties with better mid gen specs. I still lean towards they wouldn’t and probably won’t need to as i think from the start of switch 2 it will be using much better tech than the OG switch started out with and carried on with for 6-8 years. Yeah a Series X pro would add yet another system for Xbox to optimize for, Xbox X/S Pro, PC and cloud to a lesser extent. That is just to taxing on dev’s. PS5 is the only one i can see doing it and being “successful with it. They have 2 SKU’s but only one system. Which is still the much better option. Series S should have been a Digital X for $400, Sony got their SKU’s right. Now with the Black S at 1TB it’s $50 dollars less than a PS5 Digital. That’s not a good place to be in my opinion. I am 100% digital and wanted and waiting for a digital PS5 and can say at $400 it’s a monster system and i can’t say that for the new Carbon Black S. Time will tell, but rumored 8K was mentioned with the PS5 Pro and we all know 4K is barely a thing. 8K has almost no market share. Good luck marketing that as a 8K device Sony. All 13 people will be excited to have more content on their $5,000 dollar tech demo TV’s.

@Green-Bandit the coverage I read and heard claim the OLED and the Pro were entirely different devices. I never seen "OLED was the pro with parts stripped" outside comment sections and forums.

@Tharsman i think that’s mainly were i seen it as well buddy. Never much in writing and that’s why i said if you believe that was the case and i am not sure to many really know how true or not that really was. I can only say i am 50/50 on that as being legit. But i don’t follow Nintendo news nearly as hard as Xbox and PS. However if i am lucky enough and i highly doubt i am, i will buy a Switch 2 on launch day. I think it could be really great as just an upgraded Switch and we know Nintendo will give us something more than that, they basically already said so.

@Tharsman I'm not saying he straight up denied it could happen, but I'm also not as confident as most people. I ended my own comment with, "So, who knows really". There is of course always a door of possibility that it happens, but I'm not convinced hardware manufacturers really, really want to.

@Green-Bandit Again I think that was Nintendo r&d being reported as incoming product. I'm sure pro existed on spec sheets and what ifs. But whole product is different.

Carbon black though.... Is it $50 cheaper than PS5 or same price as a swoled? 🧐

@NEStalgia

Carbon black though.... Is it $50 cheaper than PS5 or same price as a swoled?

A question that is only thought inducing in the US, thanks to PS increasing its prices everywhere else.

@Tharsman good point! Those price points are insane elsewhere.

For the type of game it is 30FPS is fine (that and it's slow paced yes but people went after Redwall and Gotham Knights and both are fast paced I guess in melee and gun combat or maybe ranged attacks????) but I do think the motion blur, ray tracing and other things and to be 'cinematic' is just annoying as a reason for the 30FPS as also a reason it will be limited besides the hardware as well and yes 8 years is a while (it may be better than most 10 year old projects that usually flop too aka Duke Nukem Forever, Last Guardian as examples).

I mean at this point I keep asking about the gaps in walls, for secrets and 'small' gaps sure but I shouldn't see 'any' big gaps in walls in current gen games for loading if they are on 'current gen only' and some examples clearly have been hilarious in them still being there. The SSDs and the parts should be enough by now not wasted. Smart design use it well or blame the market companies/teams they partner with then.

Then again 1080p 60FPS PS3/360 had very infrequent examples (besides I assume 1080p 30FPS or 720p whatever for most games) that weren't Indies/smaller scale games for PSN/Live Arcade, we had what a few PS2 1080i and whatever were legit on OG Xbox of 720i or p and 1080i very likely 30FPS. I'm just sick of these techniques of HDR/Ray tracing being pushed for performance sacrifice 'oh the graphics', yes they have better options for lighting then the effort of lighting on textures but still the sacrifice is annoying even if the older way and of course however much effort of assets then just lighting with ray tracing.

Series X is clearly capable if workaround well with it and sure PCs have gotten further of parts possibilities by now over the consoles but still I do think that if we have '8K' or '120FPS' on the box of both PS5/Series X we need to see it with certain games but for open worlds pushing things I am more likely to be flexible because of the amount of effort they have to work with to make it happen is going to push the systems very likely even if performance/graphics and combination presets are a thing and I wish were a thing for all games so people can set whatever they want and have a better experience then just pure lacking optimisation and laziness to offer settings console players would like on PC but simplified so we can still use them as not all of us know what half of the technical terms and settings do or mean and could mess up the game if we did tinker with them.

The only reason I want to hear for 30FPS is the planets (hand crafted) and procedural planets loading and unloading as the main reason because that's a lot going on between space and ground transitions of CPU and GPU likely, whatever the render distance and other factors. At least for Series X being pushed besides the high end PC settings.

It's why since Haven Call of the King or Star Wars Battlefront 3 that never came (Elite Squadron asset remains) I have been waiting for planet and ground transitions without a loading screen required it's a seamless transitions and of course sizeable galaxies to explore besides even No Man's Sky on the Indie and more cartoony side (not counting the 65 quintillion planets aspect as it's still sectors your going through and Starfield while has a 1000 has still has certain galaxy and sector/solar system sizes of planets in them).

@Exerion76 I don't see that either (it certainly looks like less lag than playing via cloud). But I'm aware that the majority of people do.

@Tharsman @NEStalgia good points y’all! One thing is for sure, i think everyone in the industry would have prefer the digital Series X vs the S. But here we are so… deal with it dev’s i guess! I don’t hate on the S much, but when the price is going up on it then it starts to lose the point on me. Then again watch that thing sell out in September when Starfield comes out.

@Green-Bandit Are they discontinuing the white one? I figured it's the 512gb version for $299 and $250 on sale and $349 for 1tb, 299 on sale. Ie a discounted bundle vs the white+ Seagate drive, not a price increase for base tier s.

@Green-Bandit @NEStalgia The price is not going up, the white model is still available (at least for the time being, I do think if we suddenly see supply dwindle and not getting restocks, it should be called out.)

Side note and a bit on topic, I ended up buying that dumb $300 collectors edition... for PC That actually means I’ll be playing it on Steam. It's an Amazon order though so I got until a week from launch to cancel it if I truly truly regret it.

@Tharsman @NEStalgia congrats on the collector’s edition. Yeah I believe the white S sticks around for a while. But at 512GB most will see the value in $50 more and not have to pay more later for extra storage. Or the white S sells out and shoppers are left with the Black S at more cost. I would love to see a 2TB all digital X for $500, I would buy that for my second downstairs Series X.

@Green-Bandit @Tharsman I doubt they'll get rid of it at least until the black price point can drop. I think they're competing with switch lite to some extent with it and it's sale prices and I can't see them giving that up as an entry game pass box. It's the Xbox 360 Arcade Edition of the 2020s. (Which came with no hdd just internal MMC.)

Wow that collector's edition is something. As someone with a stupid giant Skyrim dragon statue and pipboy bobblehead I can't say much. But I want to.

@NEStalgia yeah the carbon black when it hits $299 is a solid deal but still not better than Sony’s two sku’s. Sony got that right and i am not going to take that away from them. Especially cause i preferred the $400 model.

@Green-Bandit Sure but the white is cheaper then a swoled, often cheaper than a lite. It has its market. Plus me that wanted a 1080p streaming server for remote play lol. Compared to 400 (more outside the us as tharsman reminded us) it's still a heck of a lot cheaper. It knows it's market.

As long as the base model remains available they're good. Remember the PS5 has less storage than the black but larger game installs. The black is still a decent deal. The white still seriously undercuts it.

@NEStalgia agreed. It has its market even if it isn’t intended for me. I am glad it’s there to lure players into Xbox. And 1440P for Starfield is a nice achievement in my book. Bethesda engines are never well optimized and i am sure that is a factor in the 30fps on the X. Even on PC Bethesda’s engines are not super optimized for performance. I am not claiming to be an engine expert. But i have seen their games over the years not be cutting edge tech yet produce some of the best games ever. I expect this to be some of the same. Happy to see the white and black S out for players, as Xbox shows more and more games, i think some players will snag a S and GP.

My main console is the switch, this was never an issue for me. Game looks great.

So for the kicks of it I had to read the comment section. It did not disappoint lol.

Not hating on anything but things like this never really bother me but I'm sympathetic to those impacted. Only advice one can offer is get a PC.
These laptop apu from 2019 are not that powerful, add global illumination and physics engines running bonkers in the background and we have a bunch of upset gamers. Don't make yourself miserable or miss out on a game because the graphics or framerate is unacceptable to you.

Now a pc wont fix broken games (Lou/Redfall) but you have more control over the quality/fidelity.

@SplooshDmg Well we will see what Hellblade 2 and Stalker 2 are like in UE5, so far they look better then Starfield IMO and don’t mention scale as that’s just texture sizes, which is proven by Starfield’s 125GB size.

@S1ayeR74 It has nothing to do with what it looks like. The framerate isn't determined just by what it looks like. CPUs and GPUs have to render frames in tandem. If the CPU is busy handling a billion other calculations in the background, then there isn't enough CPU overhead left for the CPU to handle the extra frames the GPU is trying to render, thus creating a bottle neck. If you lower the resolution, then the GPU is rendering even more frames and the bottleneck becomes even bigger because the GPU is running too fast. It's not about visuals, it's about things like tracking the individual physics of every single item you can interact with, which is not a feature UE5 has.

@Green-Bandit Bethesda's game engine will always be a problem and their solution is always just brute forcing it with ever more powerful hardware. The problem is waaaay back in the day they started with an engine called Gamebryo. It was the Unitiy of its day. The cheap, available, really poorly performing engine. It was always a badly performing engine but they were basically a little indie outfit making big role playing games and the engine did things they wanted to do easily. I mean the engine performed poor, on PC, back then. But they built their toolset over it and have tons of years of work put into making it do what they need it to do. Eventually after Oblivion it became too ugly and too poor to perform with, and they got id into the fold around that time and forked the gamebryo code into their own version to separate it from the open gamebryo product and customize it into something less ugly, which became Creation. Creation engine isn't a new engine, it's just a customized fork of the old gamebryo so that it doesn't look so ugly or perform quite AS poorly. Then skyrim happened and they became "triple ay!" and the expectations rose. But ultimately Xbox's big flagship game is running on a duct taped together ancient 3rd party engine that's been running since, the 90's and was infamously terrible with industry leadingly bad performance back in the 90s!! But Bethesda's spent 25 years customizing things around it and cant get rid of it, basically, ever, so they'll depend on hardware quadrupling brute force performance between their games forever more.

I kind of prefer the timeline where Skyrim didn't happen, Bethesda never got the Fallout license, and they remained a niche little maker of quirky big empty RPGs for nerds. The whole "AAA" thing doesn't gel with what they're working with.

@SplooshDmg "things like tracking the individual physics of every single item you can interact with."

You mean like totk does on a 2011 tablet?

@NEStalgia In reality what TotK is somewhat similar, but it's still not even close to the same. I can't place a stick in a box at the start of TotK and go back and collect it 80 hours later because the game doesn't script that way. Zelda is tracking A LOT for a Switch, there's no doubt about it. It's a technical marvel. The way it handles the recall ability is crazy impressive for the hardware, but it's a very short-term memory compared to what Bethesda does. I'll die on the hill of Creation Engine because it's basically my favorite engine. I don't care if the performance is lacking, the engine has the tools to build the games I want where others don't.

@SplooshDmg It may not be "close" to the same scale, but the CPU is also not "close" to the CPUs capabilities.

Here's the thing, there's a lot being talked about with state tracking, but state tracking isn't CPU bound. It's a simple status flag or position information. The CPU shouldn't actively be doing anything with it if it's out of the local area other than a basic status check. And if it is doing something, that's not a problem with the design, that's a problem with the implementation/engine, which we know, but it's still a weak excuse.

I'm half with you. I defend the kind of games Bethesda makes because I like them, but I also couldn't defend the engine they made them on all the way back to Morrowind. It was bad then, it's bad today, it was always inexcusably bad. So while I value what Bethesda can do with it and it's unique, we're working with what ultimately was a poor engine choice in the 90's and living with it all the way through it being a bad engine for the Xbox flagship game in 2023. It's kind of depressing. I mean gamebryo was a punchline and a laughing stock back in the nineties!!! It's very much a shame that that is what Bethesda built their tools into. They might as well be stuck with a Fortran codebase.

@NEStalgia that explains a lot. I knew a little of that. I wish they would go to unreal engine 5, but we don’t even know if that will run 60fps on most games on the X yet. Time will tell what happens but what they did show was impressive for them and i just read this morning that the game is less buggy than any other Bethesda game at launch ever. Not sure that is the right way to word it, but the game could have released earlier and they pulled it for more bug fixes. So that’s a good thing i suppose, we have to see it in action before we know what this really means.

@NEStalgia I'm not necessarily saying that. My point with that tracking is me just pointing out that Bethesda can't just switch to UE5 all of a sudden and keep making the kind of games they make, because UE5 does not script the same way. It's a hallmark of a Bethesda game and it requires an inhouse engine to do it. As you said above, they use Creation Engine basically because they have to. Creation Engine at this point is a crux of what makes a Bethesda game a Bethesda game. The Outer Worlds showed us exactly what that type of game looks like on UE, and it's not even close to the same type of depth.

DF has basically flat out said Starfield is unquestionably CPU bound, even Alex Battaglia defends that idea, and that dude does not do 30fps. It's the same situation as Flight Sim. I don't care if the engine performs poorly. Bethesda games on consoles have been bad since always. They've always been PC games, and they are still PC games. I bought the PC I bought because I've said this was coming from the start.

@Green-Bandit It's monkeys paw though, like Sploosh says, they're dependent on that ancient engine for their deep, deep scripting engine now because they've been building it into and around that engine since DOS died. So if they Switch to UE5 you wouldn't get a Bethesda game anymore you'd get a modern AAA game made by Bethesda that doesn't have anything you'd expect from a Bethesda game because it's missing 30 years of tools they've built around their game design totally custom into it that's necessary for them. Plus UE is terrible for HUGE open worlds. It's why all the big open world games don't really use it (Horizon is their custom Decima, GoT is SP's own engine, forget what it's called, Ubisoft uses their own Anvil or Snowdrop depending on game for their big open games (but UE/Unity for non big open games), Rockstar uses their own ,etc ,etc. UE sucks badly for open world.

It's just a bad situation. At this point a Bethesda game can't exist without their "creation" fork of gamebryo, and at the same time gamebryo was always bad and that can never be fixed...this is the best the wizards at id could do with it and it's not much. The only way out is either no more bethesda games, or a time machine to fix a bad choice in the 90's. The day the engine can't be duct taped together anymore is the day the the "bethesda" style game dies.

Guaranteed we're back to the exact same conversation for TES6 on the Series Y or Series Z or Xbox Two or whatever we're onto by then. They can't fix the underlying problem.

The only possible way out is the MMO engine. TESO runs on an engine ZeniOnline made just for that game. It's really the closest thing to a true Todd game feeling thing you'll find that looks and performs somewhat better....but...you can just feel how much shallower the scripting is just playing it. I'm not sure it could be a true replacement, and that's the only hope they'd have.

@SplooshDmg Oblivion is the one and only game a bought a whole PC upgrade just to improve the trees. But back then a "really expensive" GPU was $350. Today with $1000+ GPUs? Eff that twice.

@NEStalgia yeah i don’t think they would ever use UE5. So this is what we have to work with. The game will still be fun and looks great and deep. But ES6 hopefully will be great and have a little more optimization, but i wouldn’t count on it. Still excited for it and can’t wait to see how well it does at launch then of course we will get 3 different versions of the game over the next 10 years.

@NEStalgia When it comes to these things, money isn't an issue. I literally just don't care. If I have the money to blow to satisfy what I want out of my hobbies, I'm doing it, because YOLO, I guess. Or FOMO. Or some other stupid acronym the children use these days. I've worked hard in this life to one day be able to afford at least a handful of stupid things that my soul desires. I'm not denying myself that.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, anything over $1k I just "don't buy it". Doesn't mean I won't spend over that, or twice that or triple that in smaller increments, but $1k as a single chunk is basically just "nope, this is for rich people" I bought a PC that was over 3k once (and it barely an a year without dumping another 1.2 k into it. But it was in part orders do it didn't feel like 3k like a single purchase. I would never do that again for any reason ever no matter what.

@Green-Bandit @NEStalgia Another thing to keep in mind while comparing console prices: the Switch has barely any internal storage, even physical the biggest games require big downloads these days. If you buy one chances are you will want a large micro SD card and that adds a significant sim to the price.

@NEStalgia I've got a little over 2K in this one. Ironically my wife's MacBook cost a heck of a lot more, and well... Yeah... MY PC could take a CPU upgrade and more RAM, but I've not seen any reason yet that it actually needs one. I am in no way an always chasing maximum performance type of person. People do that, but I don't. I just want a really good machine, and I have one that will hold up for at least the entirety of this generation. Like I said the other day, if my 3700x somehow isn't up to snuff for Starfield, I'll buy a 5800x for a couple hundred bucks and sell the 3700x.

@SplooshDmg leaving a stick at the start zone and finding it again 80 hours later is more about memory and storage. In Zelda, yea things vanish if you move too far away and come back, because their position is not saved to disk after that area is unloaded.

Creation games save that to disk, can result on some absurd large save files. I recall back in the day filling my X360 HD with Oblivion save files.

Edit: also Skyrim toned down on this by resetting most items and containers after X amount of hours unless the container was marked “safe”, so you might not find that stick there 200 hours later.

@Green-Bandit The chances of ES6 being more optimized are somewhere between 0 and 1%. Closer to 0.

I do think Bethesda leaned far too hard into AAA. Skryim runs on a potato. There was a happy compromise with Starfield to bring that to the more modern while still letting it run on a mere midline hardware. They didn't do that and instead leaned hard into AAA-ing it.

And for @SplooshDmg DF may have said it was CPU bound, but all they can know is that it hammers the CPU. They can't know if it should be, or really what it's doing with the CPU at all. Honestly I find it weird that a Bethesda game would need to be CPU-bound at all. I know that's a victim of the bad engine that's probably still doing half the graphics on the CPU because it's gamebryo and it was designed before GPUs even existed and had a software renderer stock, but a Bethesda style game should be heavy on the IO, and does whatever it does with the GPU, but it's not exactly flight sim with heavy physics modeling on the CPU. And the AI in a bethesda game is lol. if anything I'd guess it's using the CPU for things it shouldn't be using the CPU for, and using it poorly on top of that. And they just DGAF because PC brute force and "it just works."

@tharsman also good point on storage. Though the SD prices are way down. I had one that went bad, (or was always bad really) and had to replace it, it was like $17. Paid $60 for the last one!

@SplooshDmg the macbook costing more isn't ironic, it's just sad.

Ugh, again with "selling your old junk to unsuspecting pawns to buy new stuff" like bandit! Can't stand that. Old failing junk with half a life sold for high prices to people who don't know better. You guys make Jim Ryan look saintly.

@Tharsman Papyrus is the object-oriented scripting language that makes that happen. Papyrus is basically constantly writing interactions into a txt format based on what you have done and interacted with. That's why the saves continuously grow, because that file from Papyrus is just growing and growing the more you play.

@SplooshDmg @NEStalgia I have a gaming laptop that is well above recommended specs for the game, it was also well above 2k when I bought it years ago, but still also ordered a new tower with a 3080gtx, i7 12th Gen and 1TB M2 NVME drive that I plan to hook up to my gaming room TV mostly to play this game. Not exclusively, mind you. I been meaning to invert on such a right to emulate PS3 games.

Also Nestalgia: I don’t trust just any sd card brand (one off brand sd card on my Wii once caught fire….) and a 1TB sd card can easily approach $100.

Edit: oh also: on the creation engine, anecdote: when Skyrim launched on PS3 it ran like hell after long enough. I remember an article explaining the reason was they found out for some reason the dragon scripts never stopped running after they got spawned, so if you didn’t kill a dragon, that dragon was “always running” and that killed the PS3 CPU. Think it was a bug on all platforms, though.

@Tharsman Lolololol I had forgotten about that. But yeah, that was 100% a thing. That dragon was just bloating save files into Oblivion. Or that's the way I recall it anyway. It's been a minute. It was the same issue with New Vegas that once the save file grew over something like 12MB the performance just absolutely fell out the bottom.

@NEStalgia I'll sell my junk to any unsuspecting sap I can. No refunds sign is hanging in the window.

As to the DF take, I don't know, really. I don't see them defending it unless they see a reason to. You are obviously no dummy, but well, I mean, they're DF. So, we'll certainly find out a lot more once they actually get their hands on the game.

I keep most my junk… it almost always goes into my “mini” museum. I think the first decide I don’t plan to hold onto is this phone I’m using right now… I’m definitively trading this in towards my next phone. Phones are getting ridiculously expensive…

@Tharsman I got lucky over Christmas and for some reason AT&T took my Pixel4a5g in as a trade-in and covered the entire cost of a Pixel 7 Pro. I'd have never paid $940 for a phone, because I don't care that much. But with a trade-in like that, sign me up.

@SplooshDmg yea ATT is doing some crazy trade in prices, over installments though, but it nets to zero if you also get your next phone over installments from them.

@Tharsman Yeah, it comes in the form of monthly bill credits, so you basically have to keep the phone until the payment plan matures, or you are going to have to pay the remaining balance. I was fortunate my 4a5G was already paid off, so I just handed it over and now I have a 7 Pro for the next 30 months. Lol

@Tharsman I basically only buy Samsung or Sandisk SD cards, exclusively sold/shipped by Amazon, and even with that I've been burned by at least three that were either bad or likely fakes. I mean...not physically burned....like yours in the Wii though.... Even Amazon through the official supply chain has had fakes dumped on them. I assume swapped in transport on the containers ships by shrewd Chinese operators. Still though, honestly can't remember if it's 1T or 512GB I have on switch, but it was legit $17, Samsung. Even if it's 512, just get 2 for $34 and swap like PS1 memory cards vs $100 for one! I love the convenience of digital, but splitting a library in half is worth it for a $65 difference.

Also, LOL about the dragon thing, I remember hearing something about that but that was so long ago I barely remembered it.

@SplooshDmg DF knows a lot of magic about analyzing game performance. They can know a lot about how it's using hardware. They can know a lot about when it's using hardware per-frame. But what they can't know is what it's actually doing with that hardware. Heck I doubt even Todd knows that, the last time anyone knew what happened inside that engine, Phish was popular and X-Files was a weekly ritual. Bethesda games do a lot of interesting things, but clobbering a modern CPU really should not be one of them. Or anywhere close. A simulation game, racing, flight, even sports, sure. A shooter with really advanced AI or predictive models for online player positions and damage, sure. A sandbox RPG with sandwich thieves? No. But, again, it's based on an engine that predates GPUs at all so stuff that modern game design throws into the GPU, including even audio, is probably all bound to single thread CPU use same as it was in Morrowind on Win95. It's honestly really really sad because their game's are so unique and special in the industry to see them hamstrung by literally being a tarted up DOS game, and knowing it's all very fragile behind the scenes is really depressing. We'll probably never see anyone else do what they can do and there's probably an expiration date sitting on them doing it, too. CDPR is the closest spiritual successor and they seem to have the exact same problems.

Then again, heck even on the Japanese side there's Square with that hideous Luminous monstrosity they keep duct taping for who knows why, and RGG has said Dragon is really aging badly, but UE doesn't work for their night time focus (they used it for Ishin because of what it does with daylight.)

@Tharsman @SplooshDmg Wait, ATT actually has service where you are? I had...kkttt...for.....ile...kkktt...but they...kkktt...lly expens....kkkttt...ervice...kkktt....uffering....kkkttt...lost....kktt...

@NEStalgia See, ironically, I see Bethesda games as simulators sort of disguised as RPGs. Because in the truest sense, that's what an RPG is supposed to be. Me essentially roleplaying by simulating a character in different world. Somehow, it's come around to this idea if a game has something resembling a plot, then it must be an RPG. How far we have strayed from God's plan.

Where I live, you basically have AT&T or Verizon, because everything else is just is terrible.

@NEStalgia the sad truth about US carriers: every single one of them has a place they suck at.

ATT does not actually cover my house, at least not indoors, but it does not have to since I get wifi calling. It covers my workplace perfectly (when I have to go there) when no one else gets reception there.

@SplooshDmg Yeah, BGS games simulate living in the world, but they're not simulators in terms of computation. Honestly one of the biggest problems they have is probably like the dragon script thing. They probably leave too many scripts for character entities "living their lives" going simultaneously when you're far outside the range of where they should be and they just never put it to sleep (back to "it just works")

And yeah, lol, IDK why "plot=RPG" ever became a thing. It's weird, I mean honestly just weird. The people that love plot games and therefore love "new RPGs because they're games with plots" are realistically people that would never, ever have touched an RPG ever. Heck, most real RPGs barely have plots. Like a BGS game. What was the plot of oblivion? Something something aylids, something something daedra, something something Picard. What we remember is the paranoid wood elf that made us spy on everyone and lolcow fireball spam while flying.

@Tharsman if it doesn't cover home there's kind of no point. If I'm going to do wifi calling then I can just do voip and not bother with paying a cell company.

@NEStalgia

if it doesn't cover home there's kind of no point. If I'm going to do wifi calling then I can just do voip and not bother with paying a cell company.

Then how you drag that voip to the store or while driving around? It might not sound like it, but I do leave the house often enough 😝

Edit: me spending most my time in my home office, in my basement, is likely why I dont get signal at home, though....

@Tharsman Great point, it’s almost a must to get a card. I got a 256GB on sale, the Nintendo yellow one with the Star. Works great. But that’s a solid point and let not even get into if you want the Pro controller, i have 2 of those and that is half the price of the console hahaha

@Green-Bandit Yea but extra controllers is a break even, even today.

The reason I bring up extra storage is because the whole point of this more expensive Series S is the extra storage. If you want to compare that to a Switch, you would have to also add similar storage to the Switch.

@SplooshDmg Your first sentence is funny as 😂 so graphics don’t dictate frame rate, ok… and yes they can reduce the resolution, I never said they couldn’t. They should reduce it and offer a 60FPS mode with reduced graphics settings as an option to players.

@S1ayeR74 Your entire paragraph is funny, because it's wrong. Lol

If the problem is the CPU as even outlets like DF suspect, turning the GPU intense settings down doesn't just magically fix the CPU bound issues. The CPU calculations have to be doubled when you double the framerate. If the CPU can't calculate that much, then you aren't doubling the framerate.

@NEStalgia Yeah, I mean, I'll tell anyone. I love Creation Engine. It's janky, but I love what it does. I do kinda wonder if Starfield truly will be the most polished Bethesda game to date, like Phil claims. Like you said, in past games there has been a myriad of stuff running that probably shouldn't have been, but with the way the scripting handles all the variables, etc. Q&A for these games has to be nightmarish. Even a huge game like Rockstar makes, it's huge, but everything mostly has fixed outcomes, so you aren't testing for all of these crazy combinations and what ifs. Everything being modular and having its own physics, resulting in goofy things like a fly launching the horse drawn cart in the intro into the sky and no one being able to figure out what was happening for months. It's truly just... The best.

@SplooshDmg Ok so according to you graphics don't impact frame rates.

Your theory is half right, but GPU processors are separate to CPU ones. The entire point of GPUs is to take the load off the CPU. Games can be more CPU or GPU bound yes, but I don't know of a game where rescuing graphics settings or resolution doesn't increase frame rates.

@S1ayeR74 My dude, it's not a theory. You are 100% ignoring the core point of what the CPU actually does. The GPU does not exist to take the load off the CPU. The GPU handles processes given to it by the CPU. The CPU compiles the needed information and then sends the commands to the GPU to be rendered. I'm not saying you couldn't reduce Starfield to 1440 and see the framerate increase maybe somewhat, but you likely are not going to hit 60fps or even close to it constantly, which is why the decision was made to cap at 30. If the CPU is already working to the maximum at 30, then the CPU simply has no overhead left to double the order for the GPU to achieve a solid 60fps. The graphical details and resolution have zero impact on what the CPU is doing. That doesn't mean there isn't also a heavy load on the GPU though, and the determination to go with 4K was simply a choice of we can hit 4K at 30, but we can't hit 60 at 1440/1080. So, we're just sticking with 4K and 30. We're already seeing all sorts of games releasing with pretty shaky performance modes. 60fps is hard work and the CPUs in these consoles are already getting old. It's not always just turn the resolution down and 30 more frames magically appear. It's just more complicated than that, because there's a lot more to these devices than just a monster GPU.

@Tharsman fair point for sure. I was just being silly about how Expensive the Switch Pro controller is, however they have insane battery life. But yeah absolutely the storage side, Xbox’s asking price of $50 for double the memory is fair. Again i am still looking at the PS5 at $400 and saying i get the full experience at just less memory, and on a console that has cheaper memory options. But overall the Black S at $349 will sell well i believe. Might even sell out with SF on the way.

@Green-Bandit I do love the Switch Pro battery life. I often forget to put it on my charging dock at the end of the day and it still works for multiple days, despite being old as hell. It's the Anti-Dual-Sense, that thing is...

As for the Black S... man... did they miss a chance to make that model Starfield themed... at least a limited run of it... really MS... you should had sold a white Series S, 1TB, with a theme that matches that new controller... oh and of course... pack in that controller... and a copy of the game.

@Tharsman I was a little surprised to not see a limited edition X or S but i think it comes down to manufacturing at the moment and somehow Sony has figured out their issues and Xbox up until Phil on the show saying it’s better has been pretty bad. So maybe this would have just slowed down any recent success they had. I am totally guessing but it does leave a valid question of why not?

@Green-Bandit the S is rather flat, they could at least sell us decals!

@Tharsman Right!! Don’t seem like a big ask!

I got a full explantion for 30fps:

Source on twitter: @Doctor_Cupcakes

"Astonishing story emerging today from Bethesda sources that Todd Howard demanded the development team prioritise sandwiches over frames. “Another! Another!” he demanded as the FPS tumbled from a smooth 60 to a mere 30. “Panini over performance” became a motto among the team."

Shocked that Pure Xbox did not report this.

@SplooshDmg And you are ignoring what a GPU does. At the end of the day reducing graphics settings and resolution WILL increase FPS even in a CPU bound game, that is my point and I’m sticking to it. And I am also sticking by the fact Bethesda should be offering a mode like this in the game.

@S1ayeR74 You can stick to whatever you want, because at this point in the game I don't care anymore, because this is a waste of both our time.