Starfield
Massive news this morning as Bethesda has done something both standard and simultaneously still surprising. They’ve delayed not just one, but two major releases, Redfall and Starfield, into 2023.
Now in the Microsoft era, that means that the Xbox Series X/S is left without arguably its two biggest exclusives for 2022, as it was relying on both of those to arrive this year, with Starfield confidently projecting a November 11, 2022 release date as soon as it was announced. Redfall was supposed to arrive in September of this year.
Fundamentally, most fans are not going to complain about delays, as everyone would rather have a completed, functional game than one rushed out early. But this does create a unique scenario for Microsoft two lose two enormous games out of the fall release window. This makes the year in Xbox’s exclusives pretty barren, given that there just is not anything at this level to replace it. We’ll see if something like Ark 2 makes it out this year. Same goes for Scorn, but again, smaller scale. Tunic was great, at least!
Before Sony fans start celebrating, I still absolutely believe that we are heading toward an announcement that God of War Ragnarok will be delayed out of late 2022 as well and into 2023. Of the two, Ragnarok felt like it was less far along than Starfield, as the latter has been airing constant vidocs and it seemed like it was leading toward a big showcase reveal in June ahead of the November release.
I’m sure we will still see something from Starfield in June (we literally have not seen a second of real gameplay yet, only “in-engine” footage), but it’s notable these two announcements do not even have secondary dates or time windows listed, only the first half of 2023 in general.
Starfield
I am guessing that Microsoft and Bethesda want to take zero chances with either of these properties, but especially Starfield. There’s the eternal Cyberpunk 2077 lesson, of course, but I think Microsoft is also skittish due to Halo Infinite, and the fact that it was delayed a year and still launched without things like a coherent progression plan for multiplayer or campaign co-op, which have shaped the narrative around the game since then.
As for Redfall, that’s the Arkane vampire-hunting title that many have compared to Borderlands. Again, we’ve seen almost nothing from it besides cinematic trailers, and leaked gameplay that did not look great, but it was early tests, so who knows. Still, delaying both of these as a package is pretty wild to see. I’m sure both will be better for it, but this is perhaps the ultimate lesson in automatically assuming at least 2-3 major delays for every AAA release in the modern era.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.