Starfield's Game Pass Upgrade Is Currently The Best-Selling Item On Xbox

Never forget IGN and Gamespot gave this game a 7, whilst every other major review system including user reviews gave this 8's and mostly 9's or 10's.

There is no doubt Sony got their fingers dipped into IGN and Gamespot pockets.

Shameful practice.

@Dsswoosh I think it's more that those sites are ostentatious and annoying, but it might be what you said who knows lol.

This game is apparently also very prone / open for modders. It’ll be a game that one can return to every couple of years to experience what the community has done with it in the mean time.

It’s definitely a hit for a subscription service.

@Dsswoosh I think it’s more they have been harsher on things like loading screens, poor NPC faces, things like that. People are definitely picking up on minor issues as it’s played. It’s not a 7 but by the same margin it’s not a 10.

The 87/88% seems pretty much bang on.

@Friendly Without spoilers the way the story is set up you will be playing a long time just to see everything (& I think it's pretty clever what they have done.)

With mods well I think we are seeing the start of another Skyrim that we will still playing when the next gen of consoles rolls around (maybe we will get 60 FPS by then lol).

@PsBoxSwitchOwner yeah I would go 8.5 / 10. It's a great game with flaws & ain't perfect by any means but what there is well worth your time investment.

It is kinda refreshing to see an Xbox exclusive get great marketing and also great sales, despite the odd outings of reviews from IGN and Gamespot. I just worry that now every big developers start selling 30 dollar play-it-5-days-early passes 😂.
@InheritNegative I would bet that if Starfield was a PS exclusive it would have been reviewed more favourably. But at the same time, it is damn funny how Bethesda cannot make humans look like Humans in their games for some reason, across Starfield, Skyrim and also Redfall.

@Dsswoosh Sony wouldn't be so stupid. They'd forever be looking over their shoulders in case that ever came out.
More likely, the likes of Destin Legarie and Ryan Mccaffrey (the guys who hyped the game within ign for nearly a decade) lost their bottle when time came to review, and passed it off to the first sucker who put their hand up. Enter, Dan Stapleton a part timer at ign, a Sony fan who "yeah, me likes a little sci-fi."
None of the ign full timers wanted the gig. Why would they? Give it a low score and, well we've seen that.
Give it a high scores, you get the same from team blue in the crazy console war, who label u a green shill.

@Dsswoosh dont be daft, maybe it wasn't for them ,ign in other countries scored it higher ,elden ring was praised across the board,it bored me to death

@BrilliantBill the quest giving npcs and main characters are fine,the others look like melted barbie dolls

@NeutronBomb The guy at ign who reviewed it apparently had been crying at his disgust that it was an exclusive.....so maybe that played into his score......best not to pay to much attention to the meta anyway ...like it or not there are plenty of reviewers out there who are big fanboys who do have a bias

@NeutronBomb My personal opinion is its fairly obvious big review sites are paid off to provide chosen scores for certain games.

It's hilarious to me that you think Sony, a company well known for throwing money to buy off developers for exclusivity, wouldn't throw money to influence review scores from games released by their competitors.

@BrilliantBill at this point I assume it’s the very very creaking old engine they are using.

@BBB totally agree it’s absolutely solid and that high 80’/s score is very good. It’s just a shame for Bethesda that it has dropped in a year of ridiculously high scoring games. BG3, Re4 and ToTK for instance.

@Dsswoosh they all buy exclusive content ,there's a ton of exclusive games on game pass ,nintendo did it with bayonetta as well as others,you just think Sony is the big bad ,because you prefer xbox ,youre gonna be very upset at Sony ,with there response to the Activision deal,and there will be a response,i suppose you think Sony had a hand in redfall being hot garbage as well.

@Dsswoosh

Never forget IGN and Gamespot gave this game a 7, whilst every other major review system including user reviews gave this 8's and mostly 9's or 10's.

There is no doubt Sony got their fingers dipped into IGN and Gamespot pockets.

Shameful practice.

I'm sorry got any proof on that? Or are you just clutching at straws and assuming because 'they' live rent free in your head?

@tallythwack Yes the main cast looks decent-enough. But even there it is more like "Decent by Bethesda standards" and not as a whole. As someone who played ME: Andromeda which has some of the worst face design and animation in RPGs and enjoyed the hell out of it, I have no major problem with it in Starfield but still, you expect the best from a AAA flagship exclusive.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner Wonder if they will switch to Unreal as well. As their ES6 gets going we will probably find out in a year or two.

@Dsswoosh both IGN and Gamespot give FF16 9/10, the worst, most boring game I’ve played all year. I don’t take any of their reviews into consideration. They’re laughable.

Sea of Stars is a better RPG than SE can ever imagine creating right now, as was Chained Echoes last year.

@Kaloudz Great exclusives sell consoles, something Xbox somehow managed to miss for the last few years. I hope the upwards trend continues.

@StylesT so the IGN reviewer wasn’t happy Starfield was an exclusive? Yeah totally impartial then 😂

fomo
and dont know why since later you play less bugs the game has... also its singleplayer? wtf ppl care

@tallythwack Redfall was ultimately a good design which was developed on a game engine that gave it bad performance. It deserved low scores.

Deathloop, on the other hand was also total garbage, had 1 re-used map over and over again, but had a fairly decent engine to it.

Both games deserved equally bad scores because they ultimately are both trash.

Yet both IGN and Gamespot gave out a 10, even though other review sites and use reviews trashed it as hot garbage.

Yeah, I'll just go out and accuse Sony of influencing that one aswell

@Kaloudz The last time I checked Amazon UK the series X was showing last one available when you went to buy it and now they seem to be much more readily available so I assume that MS have quite smartly dropped a considerable amount of stock in preparation for Starfield releasing. The only real outlier is people upgrading to the new 1tb series S from the old one might skew the figures slightly but either way it's still a console sale.

@Fenbops I’m my opinion, the low scores were based on some game related issues - ok fine but also there were protest votes over the lack of review codes.

23 hours in. Absolutely loving it so far.

@Dsswoosh or and excuse me for being simple they just didn't like certain parts of the game as they mentioned and scored it accordingly.

That's ok and it's ok for folks to have different opinions. If we all enjoyed the same thing the world would be an extremely boring place.

Oh and before you say something about a review should be impartial & objective (which is what most folks say when I bring this up.).

These reviews are done by folks who have likes & dislikes and even if they try to ignore them it does still influence their views. That is called being a human.

Anyway you might want to add some more tin foil to your hat your conspiracy is showing 😉

@Dsswoosh Wait until the likes of Eurogamer give their 'verdict', as they pompously called it when they whined about getting their review code late....

@BBB Let me tell you why i disagree with your opinion on how games should be reviewed.

I don't enjoy RTS games. And my personal opinion would be to give them low scores based on whether or not i enjoy them. (Because i don't enjoy them).

However, professional reviews can't be done this way. Personal opinions become irrelevant and the game should be scored on how well it measures up against other games of same genre.

You absolutely can not score a space RPG low, simply because you don't like space RPG's.

Your own logic states IGN has conducted itself in an unprofessional manner.

To which i agree with your logic.

I have played with early access the last couple of days and have had a blast. I did not go in it with out of this world expectations or on that hype train. I wanted a Bethesda game and I got one. So far I'm about 15 hours in and still near the start and the scale of the game is just so massive and feel like I will be playing this game for a long time to come. Spaceship combat seemed ok but I have never been keen on that type of game and can imagine that it will get even better for me with getting new ships or upgrading them. For me, the main thing is what you do on foot. Cities are huge with tons of npcs and quests and activities. Combat/exploration is quite fun too. Kind of reminds me of Fallout and a dash of Mass Effect. I take my time and loot everything that a base or location has and I recommend doing that as to not miss anything because there are books that I found that give quests for some other planet and magazines you can read to permanently raised your stats like in Fallout. So far I have encountered zero bugs which felt weird to me because Fallout 4 was the last Bethesda game I played and dang is it buggy in parts....Looking at you Boston!! So actually feels kind of weird that they make something that operates like it's supposed to lol. If you're a Bethesda fan, you will like this game!

@Dsswoosh it blows my mind that you consider 7 a low score. It's not it's just lower than what others gave it.

To me 7 is a score you give when you mostly enjoy a game but some things deeply irritate you (& if you actually read the reviews that lines up.)

If they scored it a 1-5 then your argument might have merit but they didn't & you don't

I just think your own standards are skewing your views and you can't seem to accept that other view thing differently without assuming they are bad actors or that there is a conspiracy.

To save some time because I am now back home and want to play Starfield I am just going to agree to disagree with you and get on with my day. Hope you enjoy the rest of yours.

@BrilliantBill I agree,although I have to say the lip syncing is superb

@Kaloudz I can’t wait to start Starfield, I don’t buy into these early access upgrades, I can wait. Problem is I’m enjoying Sea of Stars that much I don’t think I’ll drop it and I’m also away for Starfield launch, oh and Baldurs Gate 3 is out 😅 I need to at least try it right? 😂

@BBB One of the reasons IGN scored it lower was because there were invisible barriers that prevents the player from wandering outside the game World.

Considering all games have this, and none of them scored lower because of it, I'd say that is more than enough reason to question IGN's subjective professionalism.

Or lack of.

It's more than enough reason, just that point alone, to warrant investigation of being paid off to score it lower than what it would otherwise been scored at.

Starfield has been received amazingly well by everybody, you seem unaware that IGN's review hasn't impacted the games success, and in fact doing harm to IGN itself.

So what exactly do you get with the early access? It's not £30 just to play a few days early is it??

@Dsswoosh even though its on xbox ? I hated deathloop it was crap ,but not as crap as redfall ,thats a different league of crap ,and it received crap scores from everyone who reviewed,because guess what,it was crap

@Deljo you get the premium content ,skins,story expansion,art book,music

@BBB 7 is absolutely a low score, these sites grade on a 7-10 scale, with anything below 7 being trash.

This was to be expected anyway, IGN and Gamespot have always had an anti Xbox slant from the very start, going back to the Matt Casamassina and Greg Kassavin days. Dan Stapleton knows what he's doing. He'll now hand off the Forza review to Destin Legiere or Ryan Mccaffrey who will give it a 9.5, proving IGN isnt biased at all - and he'll do that because Forza reviews are irrelevant. It's a game they play, and it's predictable.

@tallythwack Deathloop was a timed Sony exclusive. Sony paid for it to not be on XBox at release.

We both agree that both Redfall and Deathloop were garbage.

But Deathloop, a timed Sony exclusive, scored a 10 by IGN and Gamespot. Even though it was garbage.

Starfield, on the other hand, scored 8, 9 and 10 from everywhere, except IGN and Gamespot who scored it a 7. And it is an XBox exclusive.

The facts speak for themselves.

And my personal conclusion is IGN and Gamespot have discredited themselves, and I accuse Sony of influencing its score.

Shameful practice tbph.

@Dsswoosh

if people are using gamespot and IGN for their opinions on games they need help. this isnt the 1990s

@Jenkinss

im amazed Bethesda didnt put the condition of that dan Stapleton is never to review a Bethesda game ever gain after the prey 4/10 debacle

@trev666 True, although none are as bad as Eurogamer.

You can't even have an open comments thread like here where people agree and disagree, because Eurogamer delete any comment they don't like, probably ban the commenter too. I think they believe '1984' is a historical journal rather than fiction, with them as the new Thought Police.

@Dsswoosh To be fair most other games that have invisible barriers those barriers are usually neatly hidden by things that look like the edge of a map and not just randomly in the middle of a wide open area that it looks like you should easily be able to walk across.

@Dsswoosh ign gave days gone a 6 ,and forza 5 a 10 ,you can't cherry pick low scoring xbox reviews to prove a point,they gave starfield a 7 and the points they made about the game are valid ones, I know you're probably miffed it didn't get a 10 ,but it doesn't deserve a 10,its a very solid 8,and if you love this type of game,it'll probably be a 10,anyway a 7 is fine if you're a fan of the genre of game,I mean like I said days gone is a 6 according to ign,id give it a solid 8,I loved it ,doesnt mean I think they got paid off by microsoft, just enjoy the exclusive game bethesda gave you,its great, who knows how long its gonna be ,before xbox releases another decent title.

@tallythwackign gave days gone a 6 ,and forza 5 a 10

just shows all IGN review scores are garbage days gone is better than that and forza isnt a 10

I have enjoyed this game so much I brought the Standard version of the game to go alongside the premium upgrade I got to go with gamepass.

@BrilliantBill ES6 is already stated to be using creation engine 2 the same as Starfield.

@Kaloudz I’m about 10 hours in pal. It’s a solid RPG but reminds me of classic Zelda games in some ways too. The music is great. Glad you’re enjoying it too!

@Dsswoosh

EDIT, I'm not intentionally trying to be offensive, though I understand if it does

This just seems like tinfoil hat console war mentality, which quite frankly is childish and needs to stop. Reviews are subjective opinions.

People hate on IGN reviews all the time, it doesn't mean their reviews are bought, nor those of GameSpot. One could say all reviews are bought if a reviewer wants to keep getting pre-release codes for reviews. For example, if a reviewer is known for consistently bad reviews, it is highly likely publishers will just forgo sending pre-release codes to that review outlet so it doesn't effect their metascore, which is so problematic to begin with.

The fact that people care about the numerical score of a game is just dumb. It seems far too many people don't even bother to read a review and instead either just read the summary and view it's score, or worse, base all their decisions on a a score. Which has clearly been shown to negatively effects a developers bonus pay.

I feel reviews shouldn't have scores. People should read the reviews so they can learn of a games faults and accomplishments. There is no perfect game, some people may feel otherwise, but faults can be found in any game.

Reviews are subjective, always have been, always will, and there will always be people that don't agree with them. It doesn't always mean a reviewer will be paid off.

Looks like withholding those review copies to manipulate the metascore worked a treat!!

@Dsswoosh “ We both agree that both Redfall and Deathloop were garbage”

No. No we do not agree.

Redfall was an unfinished mess. Deathloop was a polished masterpiece

I'm about 7 hours into the main quest in Starfield, I'm playing on Xbox Series S & so far it been nothing short of amazing. It's by no means perfect, it starts slow as hell but already at 7 hours I can tell this game is going to be great. The thing that gets me is how much potential this game has, they can basically tell infinite stories and have infinite DLC down the line. I believe this is just the beginning, starfield will get better with time & I'll be there on some planet exploring something cool lol happy gaming ✌️

@ArmoredMore deathloop was phenomenal & is one of those rare games I decided to play/beat twice. I beat it once on PS5 when it first released then I beat it again on my Xbox Series S when it finally arrived on gamepass. That game was amazing & I hope they make a sequel someday.

I seen on another site that Xbox Series X sales were up 1000% due to SF. Sony fanboys were commenting whats 1000% of 2 consoles sold. It’s not like they had good numbers so 1000% means nothing. Good love the fans of the market leader. But my take on that is good games sell consoles and SF really need’s to be just the start. They need 3-4 and maybe even 5 good games that really make people pick up a Xbox or get GP or the game on PC. That will be loads of revenue for MS and much like anything in live once you get a taste of something you like you buy more of it. So once they see those numbers going up and up. You can bet more deals and studios making games will be had. Happy to see SF being a great starting point for the Series consoles and can’t wait to see if Forza zooms up the numbers. See what i did there. Made a cheesy dad joke. It’s ok to make fun of yourself sometimes. The internet has enough “serious” attitudes going on.

@ArmoredMore Ah it was tallywhack who thought it was garbage too.

My bad.

Regardless, ye, it was hot garbage, barely a 5, let alone a 10.

@BrilliantBill

"I just worry that now every big developers start selling 30 dollar play-it-5-days-early passes."

Oh, that is definitely going to be more prevalent going on. 🤦‍♂️

Publishers couldn't get money any easier than early access to a game, this will grow, and likely never go away. Me, I'll just wait the extra week. 🤷‍♂️😄

I'm not intentionally trying to offend anyone, and this is just my personal opinion on the matter. Personally, I think it's rather dumb to pay extra money for access to a game a few days up to a week before release. It's a week at most, fans have waited years, one more week really shouldn't matter, but obviously it does to a lot of people.

@Dsswoosh 5 is harsh but ok. Entitled
To your opinion. I dread to think what score you’d give redfall 😂

@Kang81 yep they’re doing it with BG3 for consoles as well

@ArmoredMore

I believe they did this for the PC version of BG3 as well

I want to play it, but I already bought Divinity Original Sin 2 and haven't even played it because I never finished the first Divinity Original Sin.

So it will be a long time before I play BG3.

@NeutronBomb

I'm honestly surprised Ryan Mccaffrey didn't review Starfield considering he's IGN's resident Xbox fanatic. No dig at Ryan, but he's said it himself, and I've been reading his reviews from the start of the Official Xbox Magazine days. I miss that magazine.

I'm fairly certain he's a massive fan of Bethesda's games too.

@StylesT

He definitely shouldn't have been tasked with the review if that was the case. If he was a professional, that wouldn't matter, but not many game reviewers seem to act professional these days.

@Kang81 yeah I won’t touch early access for anything. It’s a total mugs game

@StylesT fair enough.

another reason not to focus on the meta score is the fact that Microsoft/BGS hand picked who they gave review copies to. We will have a much more accurate meta score in a few days when all the media outlets that didn’t get a review copy publish their reviews 👍

@BBB

This is why I always say reviews need to do away with scores entirely. Too many people don't even bother to read reviews, they often just read the brief review summary and score and base decisions on that. Or worse, read none of the reviews and entirely base their opinion on the score alone.

Everyone has different opinions on how they would score a game, and they will never be agreed upon by everybody.

Personally, I read or watch reviews and what I look for is how the game plays, performs technically, and to just gain a sense of how the game is overall in gameplay and story, then I base my decision on that.

@Dsswoosh

I was so disappointed in Redfall, but the writing was on the wall with that game, and Arkane should have stuck with what they were good at. Single-player Immersive Sims. They're one of my favorite developers, I just want them to go back to what they're good at for their next game.

I diiked Deathloop from the moment it was revealed. I didn't even want to give it a chance. Primarily it was do to the slight roguelike mechanic of repeating everything over and over.

I eventually gave the game a try and surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. I'm still not a huge fan of reusing the same maps over and over, but I eventually grew to like the story and premise, and the two main characters Colt & Julianna were excellent. Personally, they're two of the best characters I experienced in gaming in a long time. The voice actors nailed their delivery and relationship to each other.

@GunValkyria Most players won't, but there are always those out there that will. Just look at the woman that flew for 7 hours to find Pluto.

@ArmoredMore On Series X, maybe a 5 or 6. On PC 4. Only for the fact the game runs terribly on both. The game itself was pretty decent. An unoptimised mess, but decent.

@Kang81 yay at least someone gets it.

I agree scores are not something that I put much stock in either. Seeing unedited gameplay is much more valuable to me for instance if I am looking to form an opinion without getting hands on myself.

I was not so much defending the review score rather more that someone is allowed an opinion even if it's different to other folks or you don't agree personally.

And if you don't agree you shouldn't make assumptions about a person based on that difference.

@Dsswoosh you talking about Deathloop???? I played it on Ps5 at launch. And on X when It launched on GP. I don’t remember any performance issues at all. Certainly no where near as many problems as starfield. But fair enough if it was running terrible for you!

@ArmoredMore Nope. Deathloop performance was pretty decent. Shame the actual game was was just a re-used map over and over again though. Got boring real fast. 5 is a fair score for Deathloop. Certainly no higher.

@Dsswoosh Or they have different opinions. This idea of reviews being paid off is so stupid and there's never any credible evidence of it happening, its just fanboys who need to touch grass getting upset their favourite new game isn't getting pointless scores out of 10.

@BrilliantBill The $30 is paying for the expansion and a skin pack, the early access is just a nice bonus.

@DennisReynolds It's about as ridiculous as paying off development studios to release their product on only one machine.

/rolleyes

PS - You made that ridiculous comment on a website paid by MS to only distribute XBox material.

/doublerolleyes

@Dsswoosh so I assume by your logic, every low rated Sony review is paid for by MS?

But what about when the very same IGN gave hiFi rush a 9/10? How does that fit your tinfoil theory? Or the fact they gave a HFW burning Shores an 8/10. Surely Sony would have paid for at least a 9 or a 10.

They are either paid off by Sony or not.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner I definitely WOULD agree with you though that Sony aren't the only company to pay off reviewers.

@Dsswoosh 🙄 Provide hard evidence to support these claims.

This site is an independent site like PQ and NL as far as know, if MS had any hand in the site we would have starfield review by now on here 🙄

@themightyant that made me chuckle on my coffee break Ty!

@themightyant Lets hope this doesn't become the replacement for microtransactions across the gaming industry.

Usually we pay less for early access because the games aren't finished, not more.

@Dsswoosh Quite a few Xbox specific sites gave Deathloop 9s and 10s.

@Yarec123 I would take this over microtransactions in a heartbeat. Have some restraint and wait a bit, it's not hard to do. There are loads of games to play while waiting.

@Jey887 Actually, that's true lol.

I doubt I'll get around to Starfield this year with my backlog.

@StylesT Strange, and I have nothing against Zelda. But that game is exclusive and graphics aren't next gen and people argue it doesn't need to be. Then all the sudden a Microsoft game comes out and they have to compare it to some of the best games ever and say it just falls short. I've stopped reading reviews because of this.

@Dsswoosh on their scale a 7 is 'Good' and it is.

I'm not too far in yet (about 12 hours) and enjoying it a lot but I can't say it deserves more than an 8, maybe an 8.5.

No actual planet to space flight (ala NMS), tons of loading screens, buggy interactions with NPCs, only okay combat, poor inventory management, limited enemy ai... etc.

It's fun and I like it but it's not ground breaking.

The review was very fair in my opinion, the reviewer also featured on the latest episode of Podcast Unlocked (the ign Xbox podcast) and spoke a lot of sense.

It's okay if you don't agree with his score but I don't think you should throw accusations around.

I gotta say I thought the code in a box came on a Credstick like the Constellation edition, super disappointed in the physical! Glad to play early but they could've added the user guide like in the Constellation edition at least.