Todd Howard Addresses Starfield PC Optimization and the Need for PC Upgrades

Todd Howard responds to Starfield optimization question, “PC needs to be upgraded” 2023.09.09 18:05 Game Mecca Reporter Jonghwa Ryu

▲ Starfield (Photo source: Starfield official website)

Starfield, which was officially released on the 6th, is not free from PC optimization. There continue to be criticisms that even high-performance PCs do not have frame protection or that there are particularly many lags and interruptions. Bethesda Studio Todd Howard’s remarks regarding these complaints are attracting attention.

The statement was made public on the 7th. Interview with Bloombergcame out of Phil Spencer, head of MS Xbox, also participated in the interview. Here, when the anchor said, “This is a question that many people are curious about. Why didn’t you optimize this game for PC?”, Phil Spencer burst out laughing and Todd Howard responded as follows:

“We’ve made some optimizations. The game is running great. Starfield is the next generation of PC games. We’ve really pushed the bar, and you may need to upgrade your PC for this game. There are great things happening in the game right now. “It’s happening, and the fans are reacting wonderfully.”

Todd Howard’s statement is a basic answer that Starfield’s requirements are higher than those of general games, and that if you want to enjoy the game smoothly, you need a PC environment of a suitable level. However, users’ complaints that technical problems occurred even with the recommended specifications or higher-end specifications of the current generation were not resolved at all.

▲ Todd Howard answering PC optimization questions (Photo source: Bloomberg official YouTube interview video capture)

In fact, gamers who heard this statement said, “Oh, it’s a next-generation PC game, so it doesn’t run on current-generation hardware,” “I have an I9 9900K and an RTX 2070 super, and it runs at 35 frames,” and “The FOV (angle of view) slider is also missing.” It’s quite difficult to believe that a game that doesn’t exist is optimized for PC. Project Wingman, developed by three people, also has a FOV slider.”, “Just saying it’s a next-generation game 100 times doesn’t make it a next-generation game. There are no vehicles in the game, which means there are no vehicles in the game. They express complaints such as, “It’s because we can’t handle vehicles technically,” and “It reminds me of Blizzard’s comment, ‘Don’t you guys have smartphones?’ The comment about upgrading your PC is the same.”

Starfield PC version requires I5-10600K CPU and GeForce RTX 2080 GPU as recommended specifications, and AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT are required for 4K specifications. However, evaluations continue to show that perfect 4K play is impossible even with high-end specifications that match or exceed this.