Starfield doesn’t have Nvidia’s DLSS at launch
By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.
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Starfield, the new space RPG from Skyrim maker Bethesda Game Studios, is launching today without Nvidia’s upscaling technology. AMD is Starfield’s “exclusive PC partner,” with both Bethesda and AMD engineers working together to optimize the game for multithreaded code on Xbox and PC, Ryzen 7000 processors, and Radeon 7000 series graphics cards.
It’s still unclear what this exclusivity contract means for Bethesda, but AMD made it clear to The Verge last week that there’s nothing stopping Bethesda from adding DLSS to Starfield. “If they want to do DLSS, they have AMD’s full support,” said AMD gaming chief Frank Azor. That could mean there’s a period of exclusivity where only AMD’s FSR 2 technology is supported, or Bethesda could have simply prioritized FSR over DLSS initially.
Bethesda hasn’t responded to repeated attempts by The Verge to clarify the status of DLSS for Starfield. Nvidia simply pointed us to Bethesda. It’s now likely that community modders will step in to get DLSS working in Starfield until Bethesda is ready to discuss the situation.
Starfield launches on PC and Xbox on September 6th, though it’ll be available in early access starting August 31st, depending on which version of the game you purchased. You can read The Verge’s review of Starfield right here.
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