Starfield was shown off during the Xbox Games Showcase that took place last week, giving us a good look at some of the game's systems, the world, character creator, and all that good stuff. It's shaping up to be a pretty impressive title, and one that's going to test the limits of the Xbox Series X/S consoles. Maybe a little too much though, as Todd Howard confirmed after the show that Starfield will be capped at 30fps on consoles, angering gamers far and wide who began bringing into question the power of the system.
However, Xbox and Starfield have found some staunt defenders in video game tech analysts Digital Foundry, who have claimed that Starfield probably needs to be capped at 30fps for consistency. Starfield has a whole bunch of systems in play that need to be maintained across a galaxy, and Digital Foundry thinks the choice to cap the game at 30fps on consoles was a deliberate design decision, and that putting out a performance mode would have given player a sub-optimal experience.
On top of that, they also claim that we should probably get used to seeing current-gen games deciding to stick with 30fps rather than give players the option to choose a 60fps performance mode. With games getting more advanced and better looking, it's going to be difficult for the big budget developers out there to get their games to the 60fps mark without seeing significant performance issues.
For better or for worse, mainly for worse I suppose, I expect that 30fps is going to once again become the most common frame rate we see in big console games, and if performance modes are offered then they might not be as stable as we would like," says Digital Foundry.
"I do think that's a bummer to some degree, but I fell like that's just natural with this expansion towards more advanced graphics capability. We had this cross gen period, and that was the opportunity for developers to push frame rate because they still needed to target lower end platforms."
So if what Digital Foundry says is true, then the days of 60fps on consoles may be coming to an end soon, at least for the big-budget titles released by the Xbox, PlayStation and the like. We've already seen it with games such as Gotham Knights and A Plague Tale: Requiem, and more and more developers will join them as we begin to move away from last-gen systems. At least it was nice while it lasted.