No need for any preamble with this one, I think. Starfield will be ready for pre-load on August 9th. …It’s not out until September 6, but at least you can (almost) have it a month in advance. I…honestly don’t really understand this one. Why exactly would you want an unplayable game sitting on your hard drive for almost a month?

For years and years now, I’ve been 100 percent against pre-ordering and the sorts of practices that support it. To me, the argument is clear: it makes no sense to pay for a game site-unseen, especially when scarcity has been almost completely eliminated from gaming. We’ve had so many disastrous launches over the past several years too, so many that it truly amazes me that anyone can still justify putting their money down before they see what kind of game they’re getting. Yet, here we are all the same.

I really hoped that after fiasco’s like No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 2042 and Fallout 76 (Bethesda Softworks’ most recent game btw) that this practice would at least be damaged a bit. But no, it’s as strong as it ever was and now we’re downloading stuff a month in advance. Why? On the off-chance that we’ll get to play a day or two early or something? And if that does happen, what would it matter? Good or bad, it’ll still be the same experien- no, actually it’ll most likely be an inferior version of the experience because we should all know by now what to expect from a AAA game during launch week, especially when it’s coming from Bethesda: a developer that was notorious for launching buggy messes even back when the studio was still considered great!

Look, I hope Starfield is good and everyone who pre-orders gets their money’s worth. That said, I don’t see this launch going any better than any of Bethesda’s last few games. Fallout 76, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian did that one, but still), Fallout 3 and Oblivion all had tons of issues at launch on at least one platform, and each successive game has only suffered more. It’s not going to magically get better. At least, it won’t until we stop handing over our money in advance.

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Sorry for the rant, but seriously what is going on? What do you think of all this? Are you excited for Starfield or are you feeling cautious too?

image from the Starfield Xbox Store page