Microsoft and Bethesda Game Studios just one-upped Sony in one of the worst ways possible.
For much of August and September, the video game community clowned Sony for releasing Concord, a live-service premium team-based shooter that, while not the worst game, failed to make an impression. The game’s lack of redeeming qualities eventually led to Sony shutting the servers down over two weeks after launching, prompting fears about its multi-billion-dollar live service plans for the future, which includes in-development titles like Fairgame$ and Marathon.
But just when you think this was the lowest one of the three biggest video game companies around could go this year, Bethesda really went ahead and said, “hold my beer.”
Over a year after releasing the vitriol-filled Starfield and posting record numbers on Xbox Game Pass despite all the criticism, Bethesda finally dropped the first expansion for Starfield, Shattered Space. Launching after successive weeks of an upward trend in playercount in Starfield following exciting updates, Shattered Space crashed and burned so hard that it’s reviewing worse than a game that no longer exists.
If you head on over to its Metacritic page, you’ll find mostly negative reviews—a bad sign for a game that was supposedly on its way to recovery.
While Starfield fell short of everyone’s expectations and was nowhere near the Game of the Year contender many thought it would become, it did at least get an 83 Metacritic score. In comparison, the expansion is faring much worse with a 54 Metacritic score.
On Steam, things don’t get much better at all, with the expansion receiving over 1,000 negative reviews, putting it in the “Mostly Negative” category.
Instead of being one huge step for Bethesda and Microsoft, Shattered Space is a debilitating two planet-sized steps backwards for one of gaming’s most storied video game developers.
Starfield isn’t the first AAA game that generated years worth of hype and didn’t live up to it. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. But many had hoped that it would do a Cyberpunk 2077, which could very well have bankrupted CD Projekt RED if not for a late surge that was the result of a combination of the surprising success of the animation adaptation, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, on Netflix and over a years worth of effort optimizing the game.
However, Cyberpunk 2077 was never a bad game. Sure, it was unoptimized and bugged. It was also lacking in features. The core gameplay was exceptional when it worked and the story, including the endings, delivered. You can’t say the same for Starfield, whose large, expansive, and procedurally produced universe feels empty and uninspired.
You can only say that a game holds so much potential for so long until you start to accept it will never realize it.
Granted, it’s only been a year and Bethesda seems intent in supporting Starfield for at least a couple of years until most of the development team moves on to work on The Elder Scrolls VI and, eventually, Fallout 5. But, someone working at Bethesda has to tell the higher-ups that whatever they’ve done has failed so far. Because if they don’t change course, bringing Starfield to PlayStation, which may happen within the next 12 months, will open yet another can of worms and put Xbox in even worse light.
For what it’s worth, Starfield should at least run best on PlayStation 5 Pro, just like another upcoming Xbox exclusive, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
