Starfield is 30fps on Xbox - "No surprise, given our previous games"

Bethesda had to drop some bad news after Starfield's big deep dive overnight. The developer confirmed that the upcoming action RPG will be locked to 30fps on both Xbox consoles.

Although this is par for the course with Bethesda games on consoles, the news will nonetheless disappoint anyone who was hoping for a fresh start on the more powerful new generation of consoles.

Bethesda's Todd Howard told IGN in an interview that Xbox Series X players can expect a 4K resolution, while Series S owners are limited to 1440p. Both are locked to 30fps, according to Howard, with no option to either unlock the framerate or target a lower resolution and a potentially higher framerate.

"I think it'll come as no surprise, given our previous games, what we go for," Howard said. "Always these huge, open worlds, fully dynamic, hyper detail where anything can happen."

"We do lock it at 30, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff. We don't want to sacrifice any of it," he added.

Howard is right that it's not that surprising. Even setting aside the developer's history with console versions, all of Starfield's trailers on YouTube have been limited to 30fps. If you tend to pay attention to these things, you probably figured that out a while ago.

Interestingly, Howard does confirm that the game can reach framerates higher than 30fps, which makes the lack of a performance mode all the more puzzling.

"Fortunately in this one, we've got it running great. It's often running way above that. Sometimes it's 60. But on the consoles, we do lock it because we prefer the consistency, where you're not even thinking about it," he explained.

Starfield releases September 6 on PC, and Xbox Series X/S. It's a day one Game Pass game, but you can play it up to five days early if you go with the Premium Edition.