Starfield Release Date Finally Confirmed

Bethesda has finally revealed the release window for "Starfield," with further delay in tow. The Microsoft-owned studio has announced that its highly anticipated game will hit shelves on September 6, 2023. Bethesda has also dropped a new trailer to mark the reveal, offering yet another brief look at its immersive space-faring setup. The game's director Todd Howard says "Starfield" is large, and the upcoming title provides a unique experience interspersed with signature Bethesda elements.

Meanwhile, if you want to dig deep into "Starfield"'s space action, you can check out the 15-minute-long gameplay footage that Bethesda released last year. A cosmic RPG using similar gameplay to Bethesda's "Elder Scrolls" and "Fallout" series, "Starfield" will have players exploring the vast expanse of space as the last remnants of a colonizer group. The game will be released exclusively on Xbox Series X|S and PC later this year. "Starfield" has been in development for several years, and it was initially announced to arrive in November last year but was pushed to the first half of 2023.

The studio will offer the best look yet at the game on June 11 at the "Starfield Direct" event. The reveal happens two days before E3 2023 kicks off, another sign that Microsoft will skip the event. In January, it was reported that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo would be absent from the show floor. Nintendo has since officially confirmed its absence at E3, but Xbox and Sony's PlayStation team are yet to do the same. Microsoft is also hosting a general Xbox Showcase on June 11, and it will be followed by the "Starfield Direct" event on the same day.

Join us for #StarfieldDirect following the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, June 11 https://t.co/Igj84qH7AT

— Xbox (@Xbox) March 8, 2023

Bethesda says that in "Starfield," players can "create any character [they] want and explore with unparalleled freedom." The game also offers a unique character trait system that will let players pick — and discard — personality attributes like empathy, space lineage, and more. Howard says the dialogue style is also classic Bethesda stuff, with over 250,000 character lines and a unique speech persuasion system requiring players to spend points. As for the world, there will be hundreds of planets to explore while the graphics are brought to life using Bethesda's in-house Creation Engine 2.