Bethesda Game Studios’ fourth major update for Starfield launches on May 15th with many quality-of-life features and improvements. As director Todd Howard promised, there are “other display modes” for console players, which means you can finally play the game at 60 FPS on Xbox Series X.
Display options will fall under Frame Rate Target and “Prioritize.” The former allows for choosing 30, 40 and 60 frames per second, but an uncapped frame rate is possibly only on 120Hz Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) displays. Starfield defaults to 40 FPS on a VRR display, prioritizing “full visuals” in the process.
Those with regular displays can still choose 30 or 60 FPS, but screen tearing may occur when selecting the latter. As for “Prioritize,” it allows for prioritizing Visuals or Performance. The former will maintain the highest resolution and visual details, while the latter lowers the internal resolution, lighting effects, crowd details and special effects.
Depending on the scenes and the amount of action, the internal resolution may dynamically change regardless of the priority. Some set-ups work better than others, with Bethesda recommending prioritizing Performance when playing at 60 FPS.
Time will tell how these options pan out, so stay tuned for more details. Starfield is available for Xbox Series X/S and PC. Check out our review here. Shattered Space, its first expansion, launches this Fall (with reports indicating September release).