A hot potato: It used to be a common sight: console games locked at 30 fps while the power of the PC pushed frames to 60 fps and well beyond. That started to change with the arrival of more powerful machines, such as the Xbox Series X. But it seems when it comes to Starfield, owners of Microsoft's consoles are going to be stuck with 30 fps.

Ahead of the Starfield showcase yesterday, part of the Summer Game Fest, Bethesda's Todd Howard spoke to IGN about the game's console performance. He confirmed that it will run at 4K on the Xbox Series X and 1440p on the Xbox Series S – there's no PlayStation version - but it will be locked at 30 fps on both machines.

"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. And we do want to do that. It's 4K in the X. It's 1440 on the S. We do lock it at 30."

Howard said that Bethesda did get Starfield running at 60 fps on console during its development phase, but the company took the decision to lock the final version at 30 fps because it doesn't want to sacrifice any fidelity to gain more frames. "We prefer the consistency, where you're not even thinking about it."

"And we don't ever want to sacrifice that experience that makes our games feel really, really special. So it feels great. We're really happy with how it feels even in the heat of battle. And we need that headroom because in our games, really anything can happen," Howard continued.

The news of Starfield's performance will come as a disappointment to Xbox Series owners, most of whom weren't happy when Redfall arrived on console with a 30 fps cap after Microsoft had previously shown it running on PC at 60 fps.

Yesterday also saw Starfield's PC requirements land on Steam, where it can now be pre-ordered. Like almost all modern AAA games, this one is going to take up a massive chunk of your SSD: 125GB.

Starfield's minimum recommendations include a Ryzen 5 2600X/Intel i7-6800K combined with a Radeon RX 5700/GTX 1070 Ti and 16GB of RAM.

As for the recommended specs, Bethesda picks a Ryzen 5 3600X/Intel i5-10600K and a Radeon RX 6800 XT/RTX 2080 while keeping the RAM at 16GB. There's also a broadband internet connection required, though we don't know if this needs to be a constant connection while playing.

Full specs:

Minimum

  • OS: Windows 10 version 22H2 (10.0.19045)
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 125 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD Required

Recommended

  • OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 125 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD Required

It's unclear what kind of performance or resolution these specs offer, either. For comparison, the Unreal Engine 5-powered Lords of the Fallen also recommends an RTX 2080, and that's just for 1080p gameplay.

Bethesda showed off a full 45 minutes of Starfield during its showcase, including the story, cities, skill trees, upgrades, space combat, and much more. Check out the whole video at the top of the page.