After years of rumors and leaks, it’s finally official. Bethesda has confirmed that Starfield is coming to PlayStation 5 on April 7, marking the end of the game’s Xbox and PC exclusivity. Preorders are live now, with the Standard Edition priced at $49.99 and the Premium Edition at $69.99. For those who want to upgrade later, a Premium Edition Upgrade is also available for $24.99.
I reviewed Starfield at launch and found it to be a game that aimed high but felt like a jack of all trades that didn’t excel in any one area. The good news for PlayStation 5 players is that the version they’re getting has benefited from over two years of updates and quality-of-life improvements, including better surface maps and the REV-8 land vehicle for planetary exploration. The game has also been visually enhanced for PlayStation 5 Pro, with a Visual mode running at 4K resolution at 30 FPS and a Performance mode offering improved visuals at 60 FPS.
Unsurprisingly, the PlayStation 5 version takes advantage of the DualSense controller with adaptive triggers that vary by weapon type, including starship weapons. The light bar reflects your health and ship health, the touchpad provides shortcuts for switching between first- and third-person perspectives and pulling up the map and hand scanner, and audio logs and non-local ship intercoms play through the DualSense speaker.
The PlayStation 5 launch coincides with Free Lanes, Starfield’s biggest free update to date, which goes live across all platforms on the same day. One of my biggest complaints with the original game was how limited space travel felt, and Free Lanes directly addresses that by letting players freely fly between planets within a star system. The update also increases space encounter frequency, adds a new resource for gear and ship customization, introduces new options for upgrading Starborn abilities, and lets players bring their favorite gear into New Game+. It touches nearly every major element of the game and sounds like the kind of overhaul Starfield needed.
Also launching on April 7 is Terran Armada, a new story DLC where players take on an army of highly advanced robots threatening to put the galaxy in a chokehold. It features the Incursion system, a new companion, and powerful new tech to uncover. Terran Armada is available on its own or bundled with the Premium Edition. On top of that, players can jump into the Trackers Alliance bounty arc through the Creations menu, which includes seven unique, high-value targets to hunt down across the Settled Systems.
As I mentioned earlier, the Standard Edition on PlayStation 5 includes the base game at $49.99, which is notably cheaper than the original $69.99 launch price on Xbox and PC. The Premium Edition runs $69.99 and bundles in the Terran Armada DLC, Shattered Space DLC, 1,000 Creation Credits, the Constellation Skin Pack, and access to the digital artbook and soundtrack. Whether the improvements since launch are enough to change my overall feelings about the game remains to be seen, but PlayStation 5 players are at least getting the most complete version of Starfield to date.
