Starfield’s Todd Howard claps back at interviewer who questions PC optimization

When asked about PC optimization on-air, Starfield Director Todd Howard tells audiences to upgrade their PCs for the game.

Starfield is already breaking records for the crew at Bethesda Game Studios. According to Xbox head Phil Spencer, it’s the most wishlisted game on Steam “across Xbox and Bethesda Game Studios history.”

The new RPG also managed to generate an impressive one million concurrent users on day one of its wide release. But not everything’s sunshine and roses in the Settled Systems.

Starfield players on PC have reported a host of issues, ranging from audio bugs and crashing to visual stuttering and other performance hiccups. Apparently, it’s so rough for some that they felt the need to ask Todd Howard about it on the air.

Todd Howard on Starfield PC optimization: “Upgrade your PC”

In a live TV interview for Bloomberg Technology, one host presented Howard with a popular question from the show’s audience: “Why did you not optimize this game for PC?”

The Starfield Director wasted no time replying, “We did. It’s running great. It is a next-gen PC game. We really do push the technology, so you may need to upgrade your PC for this game.”

This exchange takes place at the start of the interview linked below:

While there are fans laughing at Todd Howard’s reply, others can’t help but feel a bit burned. A Reddit thread about the interview perfectly demonstrates the mixed responses.

One user said, “Look I generally like Todd, but this statement is just straight-up disrespectful. There is no good reason why my 6700 XT and R5 5600X can’t maintain 60 FPS in 1080p, even on low settings.”

Someone else chimed in with, “Todd you can’t say that if you shipped without DLSS 3.5.” Another reply reads, “The team couldn’t even put an FOV slider into the game in 2023, runs okay for me but some things are pretty basic in PC gaming.”

Modders have already launched mods that implement Nvidia DLSS for smoother framerates, yet many users hope that better PC optimization is on the way for Starfield from Bethesda itself.