As the year reaches its halfway point, it feels like most of 2021’s biggest guns have already fired their load. Sure, there’ll be another Call of Duty as Activision has tasked all available hands to work on its cash cow and Deathloop is definitely on many an agenda, but what of Starfield? Announced in 2018 after having been in development since 2012 according to reports, Bethesda’s space odyssey has had very little to show other than a hype-building teaser trailer.
According to an Xbox Era report, the site says that Microsoft has begun purchasing ad space to promote the game, hinting that this may be the year in which the game finally releases. “If you think logically about when they would have bought this ad time it would have been during the pandemic. So if they’re buying ad time for a game to come out in 2021, during the pandemic, then obviously they must be aware of something we’re not,” the site’s editor Nick “Shpeshal Ed” Baker said on his podcast.
To add more fuel to that rumour bonfire, VentureBeat and noted curator of the Game Mess Jeff Grubb also claims that Microsoft is keen to give Starfield a proper showcase soon, and get the ball rolling on properly marketing the game now that Bethesda is part of the Xbox family. And as an added bit of leakage, there’s the supposed concept art of a spaceship and a loading screen that was posted on Reddit and a few other sites, that was mysteriously taken down.
A mere handful of months sounds like a short build-up to get fans excited in comparison to how Microsoft and the rest of the industry reveal game projects years ahead of their release, but it’s not exactly unusual for Bethesda. The publisher famously released Fallout 4 just four months after it was revealed, and has usually taken that tactic with the vast majority of its games to build up a healthy amount of hype. Here’s looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077.
While it has no release date yet, you can also expect Starfield to be a day one release on Xbox’s Game Pass service.
Last Updated: May 10, 2021
