Starfield Standard Edition on Xbox will have a physical disc, Bethesda clarifies

This space odyssey is finally over

Marco Wutz | Jun 27, 2023

Starfield Standard Edition on Xbox will have a physical disc, Bethesda clarifies /

All the outrage and confusion about the Starfield Standard Edition for Xbox Series X not having a physical game disc included have been for naught: Bethesda clarified on the official website of the game that the console version will indeed come with a disc.

What’s unclear at this point is if that disc will have the entire game on it – with a total size of around 125GB and storage space of 100GB on a disc that seems rather unlikely. Plus, a Day 1 Patch always has to be expected these days, so you likely won’t be able to play without downloading something first in any case.

It’s the PC Standard Edition that’ll come with a code included instead of a disc, but that shouldn’t be surprising to anyone – when’s the last time you’ve seen a gaming PC with a drive to read discs?

The debate around digital releases replacing physical launches more and more has flared up in the last couple of months due to several prominent examples, Starfield being among them.

Alan Wake 2 will also not get a physical release, the developers have announced. They argued that a digital-only launch gives them more time to polish the game, because a physical release would put additional pressure on the team to deliver a playable version sooner (since discs and boxes require some additional production time).

THQ Nordic just announced that it would only release a limited run of physical editions of its PC games in the future.

Starfield is set to be released on September 6, 2023, on PC and Xbox Series X|S. It’ll come to Xbox Game Pass on the same day.

Published Jun 27, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg