Last week, Bethesda’s Todd Howard confirmed the resolution and framerate that Starfield will target on Xbox Series X and S. And, as the title implies, the only platform that will support native 4K resolutions and 60fps will be the PC.
According to Howard, the game will be locked at 30fps on the Xbox Series consoles. Moreover, Bethesda targets a reconstructed 4K resolution on Xbox Series X, and a reconstructed 1440p resolution on Xbox Series S.
Now the reason we highlight this is because the game will be advertised as a 4K game for Xbox Series X. However, it won’t be a native 4K game. In other words, Todd Howard is slightly misleading console gamers.
As DigitalFoundry revealed, the internal resolution of Starfield’s Xbox June 23 Direct Demo was 1296p. And this is nowhere close to what 4K is.
Now I know what some will say. It’s 4K reconstructed so it’s still 4K. Fair enough. If you believe this, then you won’t mind calling DLSS Performance Mode in 4K as real 4K. After all, it’s 4K reconstructed, right? So should we, and all other tech sites, be solely using DLSS Performance in 4K and name our results as “4K results“? See the problem?
Another reason we’re bringing this up is to prevent future idiotic comparisons. Again, keep in mind that the Xbox Series X won’t be running the game at native 4K. Not only that, but we don’t even know if it uses the Ultra settings of the PC version. Therefore, you can’t go around saying “Xbox Series X runs it at 4K/30fps, why this more powerful “X” PC can’t?”
Starfield releases in September. That’s two months from now so no, Bethesda won’t magically offer a native 4K resolution on Xbox Series X. There is no secret sauce here. And, as we’ve already stated, Bethesda has already downgraded the game’s characters. Thankfully, though, the game’s environments still look great.
In conclusion, Starfield will support native 4K resolutions and 60fps only on the PC. That’s a big win for PC gamers already. Still, it would be awesome if the game also supported Ray Tracing on PC. Or perhaps DLAA and DLSS 3 Frame Generation? Now that would be cool.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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