Starfield release date reportedly set for late 2022, story trailer likely to be revealed at E3 2021

According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Starfield, Bethesda’s new sci-fi RPG, is most likely going to be released in late 2022.

Rumors like this keep floating around but Starfield is nowhere near done, according to several ppl familiar with development. It'll be at E3 but the planned release date I've heard is way later than most people expect. Sharing this so that folks keep their expectations in check https://t.co/LVFzmX1XYu

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) May 20, 2021

This comes after several rumors regarding Starfield’s late 2021 release surfaced online.

However, there is a unanimous consensus among industry insiders that Xbox is going to showcase a reveal trailer of Starfield in E3 2021.

Starfield was first announced by Bethesda in E3 2018, while they were still working on two projects - the multiplayer-only Fallout 76, and the mobile-focused The Elder Scrolls: Blades.

Starfield's reveal in 2021 and release in 2022 would be a departure from the usual Bethesda formula

The rumor about Starfield’s 2021 release date gained traction as a corollary to Starfield’s expected presence at E3 2021. Since Fallout 4 in 2015, Bethesda has created a tradition of revealing a game in the summer, before releasing it in the winter of the same year.

However, things have apparently changed in the case of Starfield, and industry insiders suspect that Microsoft has something to do with it. For the uninitiated, Microsoft acquired Bethesda Game Studio’s parent company, Zenimax Media, in September 2020, in a $7.5 billion deal.

I anticipate a lot of people are going to try and tell me I was wrong.I said for months the “goal” I had heard was late 2021, but that there was always the chance it was in 2022. As we got closer to E3, I shifted my reporting to what I had heard along others which is 2022. https://t.co/FR5jocni0z

— MrMattyPlays (@G27Status) May 20, 2021

With the late 2022 release window in mind, the Starfield reveal of E3 2021 is most likely to be a story trailer. This can help Bethesda in getting people acquainted with the new world of Starfield, which in contrast to Fallout or Elder Scrolls, is a brand new IP.

Quakecon 2021, which is slated to run from June 19th to 21st, can also serve as the next step in more Starfield development news from Bethesda.

As MrMattyPlays summed up in his video regarding Starfield’s release, the 2021 vs 2022 release date debacle might have arisen due to the different sources used by industry insiders. But as Jason Schreier has pointed out, "the people making the game," that is, the Bethesda devs, have pretty much agreed on a late 2022 release.

Schreier pointed out:

“The bulk of Bethesda Game Studios, including the MD office, was working on Fallout 76 until it launched. Starfield's team was very small until 2019. Rumors that the game was planned for 2020 or far into production then are just not true.”