Bethesda is reportedly making ready the much-rumored PlayStation 5 launch of Starfield for spring 2026, which is able to come alongside a brand new growth.
Based on MP1st, Starfield was pushed out of 2025 “partly as a result of RPG’s weak gross sales of the primary growth, Shattered House.” Shattered House, which launched in September 2024 to a ‘largely damaging’ Steam consumer assessment ranking, was meant to be adopted by an growth this 12 months as a part of an annual launch schedule.
IGN has requested Bethesda for remark.
The PS5 launch will apparently coincide with the discharge of Starfield’s second growth and different quality-of-life updates. MP1st stated to not anticipate an announcement at gamescom later this month, or an imminent shadowdrop, as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered benefited from.
The query of whether or not Bethesda would possibly stroll away from Starfield to concentrate on its different franchises has been a working theme since launch. In June 2024, Bethesda insisted it remained dedicated to supporting Starfield, and confirmed at the least one different story growth would launch following Shattered House. And in an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Sport Studios’ Todd Howard stated the developer was aiming to launch an annual story growth for “hopefully a really very long time.”
However there was little information since, main Starfield gamers to specific their dissatisfaction on the degree of communication popping out of Bethesda on the way forward for the sport, with its no-show at June’s Xbox Video games Showcase thought of the ultimate straw for some.
Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first model new IP in 25 years, and it went on to achieve 15 million gamers. Nevertheless it was not as nicely obtained because the studio’s earlier video games within the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, and the Shattered House growth did nothing to enhance sentiment.
Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer later revealed that he had had a dialog with Bethesda growth chief Todd Howard concerning the launch cadence for Starfield content material. “Todd and I had been speaking about Shattered House,” Spencer stated. “Starfield is a recreation I put a ton of hours into and actually love, however they’ve had this factor the place they’ve added options all year long after which they’d an growth. I believe a number of the suggestions on the growth is: ‘We needed extra options.’ And he is like, ‘Nicely, ought to we’ve waited to place buggies out?’
“And so, I believe you are attempting to tune each growth effort and the impression of the growth. And I believe there’ll at all times be a stability to managing the sport month to month. However not each recreation will do expansions.”
In the end, although, Shattered House was criticized extra for its lack of area content material than its lack of floor content material. As IGN wrote in our Starfield Shattered House assessment: “So far as I can inform there’s completely nothing added for spacefarers aside from now you’ve gotten a method to legitimately purchase Va’ruun ships as a substitute of stealing them from Zealots who assault you in area. That’s tremendous, as an growth doesn’t at all times must meaningfully increase each facet of a recreation – however I used to be shocked that there wasn’t at the least a token function thrown in for area jockeys in an growth with ‘area’ within the title.”
Final week, Bethesda lastly broke its silence on the way forward for Starfield, insisting it was nonetheless engaged on updates and would share particulars on the “thrilling issues” it had deliberate within the coming months.
Bethesda was critically affected by Microsoft’s newest spherical of layoffs, with cuts to its London workplace and ZeniMax On-line Studios. Its unannounced MMORPG was canceled, and its veteran studio head stepped down.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You’ll be able to attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.