Bethesda to Finally Announce Starfield on PS5

After years of Xbox and PC exclusivity, Bethesda has confirmed that Starfield news is coming next week, and the timing is not subtle. The studio posted on X on March 13 that it would have "more to share next week", and given that rumours have already pinned a PS5 release date to April 7 with pre-orders reportedly going live on March 18, the announcement practically announces itself.

The tweet came out of an unlikely chain of events. Starfield composer Inon Zur had gone on record calling director Todd Howard a "visionary" and predicting the game would eventually become "legendary", insisting that people "were just not ready for it." Bethesda responded by gently deflating the praise: "We ran this by Todd and he said his only visionary power is seeing running lanes in EA College Football 26. He appreciates all the passionate feedback on Starfield and we'll have more to share next week." It is, credit where it's due, a genuinely funny bit of corporate communication. Self-deprecating, timely, and it buried the actual news in a way that made people pay attention.

What that news contains beyond the PS5 port is the more interesting question. Howard himself set expectations earlier this year in an interview with Kinda Funny, saying the upcoming update would be "updates and things that change the game, not in an isolated way, but sort of meta, using outer space and things in ways that we haven't." He was also explicit that it would not be a Starfield 2.0 moment, and that players who bounced off the original release probably would not be won back. That is a reasonable thing to say, and I respect the honesty. It is also a sign that Bethesda knows exactly who it is talking to here.

What Starfield Is Walking Into on PS5

Starfield sits at an 85 average on OpenCritic with 83% of critics recommending it, which sounds healthy until you remember this is a Bethesda game launching in the same year as its competitors were shipping tighter, more focused RPGs. The critical reception was warm; the community response was considerably more divided. The first expansion, Shattered Space, arrived in September 2024 and landed poorly with a fanbase that wanted systemic fixes, not more of the same content on a new planet.

So the PS5 version is arriving into a complicated situation. New players picking it up on PlayStation will not carry the baggage of two and a half years of discourse, which is genuinely an advantage. A fresh audience that just wants a big Bethesda space RPG to sink into might find exactly that. And if the new update ships alongside the port and delivers on Howard's "meta" outer space promise, there is a real chance the PS5 launch does more for Starfield's reputation than anything since release.

To be fair, the Steam page still shows a game that has kept a player base going for over two years, which is not nothing for a single-player RPG in a live-service era. The question is whether Bethesda uses next week's announcement to give those players, old and new, a genuine reason to care. If the PS5 port arrives with a meaningful update and honest communication about what has changed, that is a real moment. If it is just a port announcement with a roadmap and a promise, PlayStation owners will have seen that before.

Next week will tell us which version of Bethesda shows up.

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