Starfield's huge May update was a big one, bringing loads of new performance modes and other fixes and tweaks to Bethesda's 2023 RPG. Shortly after last week's release the update was getting very good feedback from fans, and now it seems to have produced a big bump in player numbers as well.
Per figures gathered by outlet True Achievements, Starfield has climbed nine places in the latest Xbox gameplay charts - now breaking into the top 20 games played on the platform. According to TA, the numbers have jumped up by 72% since the update, which arrived on May 15th.
This seems like a decent bump to us, and it's always good to see these sorts of free updates create an uptick in player numbers. Clearly, people were excited to get back into Starfield at higher frame rates, so the update has done a good job in that regard.
As for the actual performance improvements themselves, we did a quick Pure Xbox comparison right when the update dropped - so if you'd like to see how the game performs across multiple modes on Xbox Series X, do check out the link down below. Oh, and we have more exciting Starfield updates to come as well!
Have you been contributing to this player number increase? Tell us if you've been back amongst the stars down in the comments.
Comments 15
72% of what? 1000? 20000? I hate part information
like it or not, 60 fps on consoles is important and a must nowdays. if a dev can't manage that give em the ax.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner They didn't want to say it, but it's 7.... now it's 12.....12 people are now playing Starfield.
Almost like 60FPS is important. We're not living in the 90s anymore.
@PassePartout sorry I’m somebody who enjoys numbers and stats. I find them interesting and you can often understand things far more than a random number
No one should be saying good job Bethesda, or thanks Bethesda. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, included in this update should have launched with Starfield day one.
There is no excuse for not have.
One would hope the lesson learned would be console players do care about 60fps. Your options shouldn't be "accept 30fps, or go spend a thousand plus on a PC that's weaker than the $500 console so you can manually turn down all the settings yourself until you hit 60+fps"
@InterceptorAlpha But in the 90's most games were 60fps....
60fps is obviously better but not crucial to me especially in a game like starfield no matter the frame rate it's slow and boring
The frames were not the issue, the horrible pacing and just how boring the game is, that's the real issue that will never be addressed.
@BigBobEnerG Couldn't disagree more. I took a break after 250 hours because of absolutely how much there was to do. I burned myself out chasing every new thing I found. Never eveven went through the first playthrough despite all those hours. And that is with only having finished 2 factions.
@NEStalgia I'm know it was a joke. But this is something so misquoted it hurts.
The games ran at 60hz, matching the refresh of CRTs so you pretty much never had screen tearing. But not always 60fps. And less so as you moved from the Nes to the SNEs then to the N64.
Quite a few games even rendered into to 10s. 3D games running at 60fps, on consoles in the 90s, was extremely uncommon as well.
When it came to 2D games they were only 60fps by technicality. Due to the interlaced nature of the screen, it used even lines to draw one picture, and odds to draw another. Ultimately this either doubled the same frame, or have you two different frames at half the resolution. IE 640x240 instead of 640x480.
I still have a Panasonic Tau CRT that does 1080i and even has a HDMI input. I use retro consoles on it all the time and it is wild how much this gets misquoted.
@InterceptorAlpha This is all true, though given an option to play modern "30fps" games At interlaced resolutions for 30fps, I'd take that in a heartbeat compared to what we have. And yeah, the "60hz" was more about 8/16bit...obviously N64/PS1 was abysmal performance. Still most of the time for the 8/16 bit games, the NTSC versions had excellent performance, albeit with slowdowns when busy. Still ways away from today's 30fps "standard". And beautiful, beautiful CRT output.
I started up again a few days ago, but not because of the update. Just decided to finally give it another shot because I couldn’t get into it the first time. Now I’m really enjoying Starfield.
So not even double. That's not 'huge'. False hype much?
People act as if 60 fps has been the standard for ambitious RPGs on consoles. Starfield as 30fps at launch wasn’t the issue with this game. Anyways 60 fps is achievable for any game type but developers must scale back the graphics or art style vision. Which would then cause complaints about the graphics being dated for current hardware. Developers have a tough time pleasing the console crowd these days whom expect a lot but don’t want to pay for good bespoke hardware at launch nor pay for new games which deserve a higher price.
I wonder how many like me booted it up to see the changes, but have no real intention of going back till Shattered Space DLC.
I thought the framerate was MUCH better set at 60, though still inconsistent even on a VRR display. Maps were a welcome addition.
But probably the most significant change for me was being able to fine tune in-game settings like how many credits the stores have, carry weight etc. This was a real problem where selling all the loot you picked up took longer than acquiring it and/or having to do multiple trips. This and 60fps kinda make me wish i'd waited to play it as it would have improved the experience significantly.
That all said all these updates felt like things that should have been in the day 1 game. Looking forward to seeing what other changes they bring in time for the DLC.
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