PSA: You Can Download Starfield

With a tantalisingly small amount of time left until Starfield is in our grubby little mitts, it’s a good idea to take a look at an extremely helpful but often overlooked Xbox feature.

You can pre-install the game to your console or PC via the Xbox app right now, with the pre-install for Steam coming this week too.

But you’re also able to do this on console if you don’t own the game yet. The full install can be put on your SSD and it’ll just tell you that you don’t have the licence if you try and launch it.

This can be done for any game on the console. So, for instance, if you’re out with friends and someone recommends something, you can download it via your phone and buy it when you’re ready to play it.

This can help to reduce the amount of waiting time necessary to get into the game when you’re ready for it. Which is especially important for something as massive as Starfield.

The pre-release hype is getting bigger and bigger, and a little tip like this will save you some time hitting download and waiting for 100GB+ of data to download before you get a single splash screen.

It’s one of those modern conveniences that make perfect sense. We just don’t think about it unless we need it.

Reviews for Starfield will be released on Thursday, and it’s already looking like it’s going to be huge. Along with the latest Zelda and Baldur’s Gate games, this will round out the year very nicely. And whatever happens, it’ll be part of GOTY talks too.

Then it’ll release to early access customers on September 1, and to the rest of us on September 6. Book your vacation days now.

A Look at Starfield

Starfield is Bethesda Softwork’s first new IP in more than 20 years. It’ll have everything we’ve come to expect from one of their RPGs. Only much, much bigger.

We’re talking 1,000 planets to explore, and an endless number of things to discover.

And although the game is still under embargo amongst critics, there have been subtle (and less-than-subtle) hints that the reaction is going to be extremely positive. Some critics have been posting playtime, some hitting 130 hours. Others have been talking about the lack of sleep they’ve been getting.

And while that’s not confirmation of positive scores, it says the game is immensely playable.

Whether or not this gives it a top score, we won’t fully know until the end of the week. But if it scores as well as some are suggesting, it will end up an all-time great.

That’ll be very good news for Xbox. And doubly good if Forza Motorsport manages to continue Horizon’s tradition of 90+ scores. Add in Call of Duty Modern Warfare III, which will probably be first-party by the time it comes out.

Which would be an extremely strong position for Microsoft going into 2024. It’s all up to them to continue that momentum.

But it all starts with Starfield. So get it installed and ready to play at launch.