Starfield will have the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game, Xbox exec says

polygon.com:

Mark this one down: Starfieldwill have “the fewest bugs of any game from Bethesda has ever shipped with.” That’s according to Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios.

Longtime players of Bethesda role-playing games, recalling past launches in the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, are practically licking their chops at this claim. But he laid it on the bar, speaking to Giant Bomb’s Tamoor Hussain and Jeff Grubb, with his boss, Phil Spencer, alongside no less.

Here’s Booty’s full quote:

Working with Todd [Howard, Bethesda Game Studios’ creative director] and the team, I see bug counts, and I’ll just say that, by the numbers, if it shipped today, this would be the, you know, have the fewest bugs of any game from Bethesda has ever shipped with.

I suppose that not rolling this one out on PlayStation, a notoriously difficult platform for Bethesda RPGs, helps a ton there. But even those who have poured hundreds of hours into Fallout 3 or 4 or The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim know what a dice-roll those games were, still, at launch on PC and Xbox. Not necessarily game-breaking bugs, but definitely immersion-breaking, in a way that punctures the kind of deep experience Bethesda Game Studios is shooting for with these epics.

Before Booty’s remark, Spencer said, “The team has definitely matured. They’ve got Fallouts and Skyrims and Elder Scrolls under their belt.”

But then, in an even more inculpatory statement, Spencer said, “Truth be told, when the acquisition closed, this game had a significantly earlier ship date than where we’re actually launching it.”

Well, that’s interesting. So then why was it delayed twice?

“Sitting down with Todd and the team, and explaining that we want to give this team the time — I think Matt says that