Bethesda executive producer and Starfield game director Todd Howard had some choice words to say when asked why the game hasn’t been optimised for PC.
Speaking to Bloomberg alongside Xbox head Phil Spencer, Howard was asked a question provided by the outlet’s audience: “why did you not optimise this game for PC?” After a brief pause caused by that classic on-air interview delay, Howard quite simply responded, “We did, 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.”
Bloomberg’s question was almost met with a laugh from Spencer, which obviously tells you a little bit about what he thought of it. Howard was also quite clearly prepared for such a question, as he didn’t beat around the bush, making it clear that you might need a stronger PC for its latest RPG. Though needing to upgrade your PC is obviously a different and complicated conversation to be had.
If you’re comfortable with modding your game, though, you might not have that much to worry about when it comes to getting the game running on your PC. Because the game has already been out for almost a week thanks to its early access release, there’s already a potato mode mod that massively compresses all of the textures in the game. As a result, it makes it a lot easier to run on older PCs. Plus, there’s also a mod that helps the game run on Steam Deck, but also helps lighten the load on PC if you like.
Howard also recently shared his thoughts on Starfield being an Xbox exclusive, when he made comparisons with how when you think of Zelda, you think of Nintendo.
