Starfield officially released on Xbox Series X/S and PC September 6, introducing players to developer Bethesda’s first new universe in 25 years, and their platforms to really great potato physics. But some PC users have been disappointed—why does the game seem to be struggling on their computers? In an interview with Bloomberg Technology, Bethesda and Starfield director Todd Howard suggests it could be time for an upgrade.
“I asked our audience, ‘What would you ask Todd?’” Bloomberg anchor Ed Ludlow said. “Big question for many: ‘Why did you not optimize this game for PC?’”
“Uh, we did,” Howard said while Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer giggled. “It’s running great. It is a next-gen PC game. We really do push the technology, so you may need to upgrade your PC for this game. But it’s got a lot of great stuff going on in it, and the fans are responding awesome.”
Some fans are responding with annoyance.
“Ah yes, the ‘next-gen’ game that can’t even handle small interiors without needing a loading screen first,” says a popular YouTube comment.
“The game is not optimized at all,” declares another popular comment on Twitter. “My 4090 can’t even reach 60fps in so many zones and [it crashes] every time with DLSS3 [frame generation] mod.”
Read More: Starfield’s Controversial Missing PC Feature Already Modded Into The Game
It can feel frustrating to reach the point when your PC falls short of the newest games, but that’s part of the pursuit. No one enjoys spending $400 on a new CPU, but we also spend $400 on a new console every six years.
For PC, Bethesda recommends at least the following: an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i7-6800K processor, an AMD Radeon RX 5700 or NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti graphics card, and 16 GB of RAM. Its support site suggests, like Howard, that if you’re running into substantial performance issues or crashing, you should confirm that your PC meets the game’s minimum requirements…but keep in mind that “minimum” won’t present a CPU-intensive game like Starfield at its best.
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