AMD announced it would be the exclusive PC partner for Starfield, and that could set a dangerous precedent.
I’m worried. This past week, AMD announced it was the “exclusive PC partner” for the upcoming Starfield, working directly with Bethesda Game Studios to optimize the game for AMD hardware and getting AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) up and running in the game (the second, much better version, to be exact).
That’s not a problem. It’s a good thing. Nvidia and AMD routinely enter co-marketing arrangements with upcoming games. The company promotes the game or bundles a code with a new hardware purchase, and it usually dedicates some engineers to assist with getting features working in the game. Nvidia, for example, recently offered a copy of Diablo IV with the purchase of select RTX 40-series GPUs, and the game supports Nvidia’s latest version of Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS).
What’s the problem? Well, it’s the word “exclusive” that AMD used, and its lack of clarity on what that means. This isn’t throwaway phrasing. On the announcement page, AMD uses “exclusive” three times in four paragraphs of text. And the accompanying YouTube video, which you can see has twice as many dislikes as it does likes through a browser extension, uses “exclusive” in the title.
I’m not trying to nitpick, but clearly, AMD is putting weight behind being the “exclusive” PC partner of Starfield, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that gamers are putting weight behind the word, too. And the results are clear: Speculation since the announcement has run rampant, with many assuming the game won’t support Nvidia’s DLSS or Intel’s XeSS.
We don’t know if the game will exclusively use FSR 2. I’ve repeatedly reached out to AMD, but I haven’t gotten clarity on what exactly “exclusive” means. The most I’ve heard is the following: “I do not have a statement to share at this time.” It should go without saying, though, that having multiple PC options is important for a game as monumental as Starfield, marking the first time Bethesda Game Studios has released a single-player RPG in over eight years. It’s a big deal — and for all of us, it creates a problem.More than a word
Shortly before AMD’s announcement, Wcctech pointed out that several major AAA releases have implemented FSR but not DLSS. These games, including Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Callisto Protocol, and Dead Island 2, have been featured as part of AMD co-marketing agreements. In the same time frame, games that have entered co-marketing agreements with Nvidia have implemented FSR at or shortly after launch.
Take your tin foil hats off for just a moment, though. There are several other reasons why some games only feature FSR (or DLSS, for that matter). Resident Evil games, for example, have only supported FSR since Resident Evil 7, so there’s definitely a world where the developers have found something that worked and ran with it.
