As far as we know, Starfield is still coming sometime in the first half of 2023. Microsoft confirmed last year that Starfield will launch after Redfall, and a recent leak has Redfall launching on May 2. That would give Starfield a release window of sometime between May 3 and June 30. But Starfield has been delayed before, and the most recent change to the game’s release date on Steam has some fans concerned.
Head to Starfield’s Steam storefront page and you’ll see it has been updated to “coming soon” from “2023.” Going from sometime this year to something as nebulous as “soon” doesn’t sound like an improvement, but as noted by PCGamesN, it’s probably not really that bad.
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Steam offers developers various options to set their release dates, from specific, fixed dates when the developer knows exactly when they want their game to release to more generic windows like January 2023, Q3 2023, or even a full year. However, Steam’s back-end catalog of release dates will default to the last possible day within these windows, so January 2023 will actually be January 31, 2023, and just 2023 will be December 31, 2023.
Changing from “2023” to “coming soon,” likely means that we can expect Starfield before the end of the year. But if we know Starfield is coming in the first half of 2023, why didn’t Bethesda just update the release window to something like “Q2 2023”?
We might not have to wait too long for the answer to that question. In yesterday's announcement confirming an Xbox and Bethesda games showcase on January 25, Xbox also confirmed that Starfield will receive its own dedicated showcase sometime soon.
Redfall will definitely be first, and the latest leak says that Redfall will arrive May 2. This seemed to even be confirmed by Windows and Microsoft fanatic Brad Sams, who responded to the leak with a series of emoji that could loosely be interpreted as May 2.