Summary
SomeStarfieldplayers have taken to social media to report a number of severe audio issues with the game that are allegedly affecting both PC and console versions of Bethesda’s RPG. Their complaints have been surfacing online throughoutStarfield’sfive-day early access period.
Back in June, Bethesda attached a somewhat unusual provision to its latest game bylisting an SSD underStarfield’sminimal PC requirements. The company did not elaborate on the decision, but some early reports from people who installed the game on an HDD—intentionally or not—indicated that the requirement is connected toStarfield’stendency to read files directly from their installation location; while contemporary games often leverage asset streaming techniques that first load files into RAM,Starfieldpulls them directly from their permanent storage. An HDD hence isn’t a feasible solution even for players willing to endure much longer loading times because the RPG is constantly reading files on the fly and not just during loading screens.
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And while some of the existing complaints aboutStarfieldaudio stuttering came from players who mistakenly installed the game on an HDD, that’s not the case with all such reports. For example, Reddit user Atmo_nS claimed that they have been consistently experiencing “very annoying” audio delays and game freezes in spite of runningStarfieldfrom an M.2 SSD, the fastest solid-state disk format out there that plugs directly into the motherboard, thus offering significantly higher bus speeds compared to a traditional drive that transfers data via a SATA cable.
Multiple Xbox Series X owners have also claimed to have encountered some audio stuttering while playingStarfieldin early access. The issue reportedly isn’t limited to the game itself but also affects the console’s built-in party chat feature to the point of unusability. Rebooting the Xbox Series X is said to eliminate the issue, if only temporarily. There have so far been no such reports frompeople playingStarfieldon the Xbox Series S, in spite of that console’s comparatively modest hardware.
The number of online complaints on the matter appears to be in the dozens, suggesting that the audio issues are limited to a small subset of the RPG’s current player base. For context,Starfieldrecently cracked the top 10 most-played Steam games, peaking at nearly 250,000 concurrent players ahead of its official release on Valve’s storefront. The total number of its early adopters is likely significantly larger than that, as the game is also available on the Xbox consoles and Microsoft Store, not to mention that it’s a day-one Xbox Game Pass release, early access included.
Starfieldlaunches September 6 for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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