Why games like Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 are attracting growing fascination
- Essentially ‘interactive movies’, Bethesda’s new Starfield game, like August’s Baldur’s Gate 3, highlight growing fascination with increasingly cinematic games
- Bethesda owner Microsoft says it expects Starfield, which boasts 1,000 planets to explore, will be played for decades as new narratives are bolted onto it
Starfield, one of the most anticipated video games in years, launched worldwide this week with the hype – and production standards – of a Hollywood blockbuster.
And Microsoft has billions riding on its success.
The ever-evolving game is the tech giant’s bid to lock players into its Xbox subscription service after some eye-poppingly enormous investments in the gaming sector, which is worth US$200 billion globally.
A universe-spanning role-playing sci-fi game, Starfield is made by US studio Bethesda, which Microsoft bought as part of a US$7.5 billion deal in 2020 to boost Xbox’s appeal over Sony’s PlayStation.
Microsoft is currently trying to get a US$75 billion purchase of another studio, Activision Blizzard – the makers of Call of Duty – past regulators who are wary of rapid concentration in the sector.