Evidence That Starfield May Launch Sooner Than Expected

Reddit may be an unforgiving place that will downvote your post to oblivion before it ever gains any traction. But, strangely enough, a recent post reminding us of The Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion‘s launch points out some striking similarities to Starfield’s delay troubles and may give us reason to believe that Starfield could launch earlier than expected.

The author of the post, “TwoHour4182,” presented this evidence based on Oblivion’s pre-launch timeline:

• Oblivion was originally supposed to be released on November 22, 2005, but was delayed due to the need for the development team to work on balancing and optimization of the game.

• In order to manage fans’ patience during the wait for the release of Oblivion, the company released screenshots, concept art, developer interviews, and Q&A’s.

• The release date for Oblivion was only announced when the company was sure, similarly to the release date for Starfield.

• A big journalist conference was held in January 2006 where they again showed the game at length.

• PC specs for Oblivion appeared on February 2nd, 2006.

• Oblivion went Gold on March 2, 2006 and the release date was announced for March 21, 2006.

• Some journalists didn’t believe the new release date because of the release of EA’s The Godfather game coming out the same week, but Pete Hines declared that he didn’t care, and the launch went forward anyway.

The author concludes by noting that the launch of Oblivion ultimately worked out well for Bethesda, even though the timeline of events happened more quickly than most Bethesda launches and the game was releasing with direct competition.

So let’s construct a similar timeline.

We’ve been informed about an upcoming Starfield standalone event without a set date yet. It will most likely be scheduled for the weeks following the Bethesda & Xbox event on January 25th, 2023. So, this Starfield event could possibly be scheduled in February.

If the game goes gold sometime between February and March, then a March to April release window could be possible.

This would leave a small, but large enough window before Redfall’s release in May.

What do you think? When will Starfield actually launch? Leave a comment with your thoughts below.

Written by R0B0TS.

Creator of the Robots Radio Network and host of The Starfield Lorecast, Elder Scrolls Lorecast, and Fallout Lorecast.