Amongst all the great torrent of information about Starfield that was revealed during yesterday’s online showcase was a look at the game’s two special editions. They’re both pretty expensive (one of them is really expensive, but it comes with a watch—more on that below) but if you’re willing to spring for them, you can get into the game up to five days ahead of the official launch.
The Starfield standard edition costs $70/£60/€70 and comes out on September 6. However, for $100/£86/€100, you can opt for the Premium Edition, which gets you the base game plus:
- Shattered Space Story Expansion (upon release)
- Constellation Skin Pack: Equinox Laser Rifle, Spacesuit, Helmet and Boost Pack
- Access to Starfield Digital Artbook & Original Soundtrack
If you’re a box collector, there’s also a Premium Edition upgrade option available from some retailers, like GameStop and Best Buy, that gets you a Steelbook case and a Constellation patch. It requires a separate purchase of the base game and, technically at least, is only available for the Xbox Series X-S version of Starfield, but you might be able to convince a friendly (or sufficiently bored) GameStop employee to hook you up for the PC edition instead.
I don’t know if this is the finalized cover art, but I kinda like the minimalist look:
Otherwise, if you’re really committed to the cause, you can also go whole-hog for the Constellation Edition, an extravaganza of physicality that includes all of the above—the base game, Shattered Space expansion, Constellation skin pack, artbook and soundtrack, plus:
- Steelbook case
- Constellation patch
- Starfield Chronomark Watch
- A sweet case for the Starfield Chronomark Watch
- Credit Stick with Laser-Etched Game Code (a “credit stick,” in this context, being Starfield’s equivalent of money)
This bad boy will set you back a whopping $300, and as far as I know can only be had directly from Bethesda (and is not actually available for purchase just yet). Do note, as the fine print does, that the watch in the Constellation Edition is not actually a telecommunications device, and does not have touchscreen support—it’s a watch.
Here’s a look at it from yesterday’s Starfield Direct:
Aside from all the extra stuff, both primo packages will also get you into Starfield up to five days ahead of the standard release date—”up to” because, again with the fine print, the actual advance time will depend on when you buy the game and “is subject to possible outages and applicable time zone differences.”
That’s the part I find interesting: I know we’ve all been waiting a very long time for Starfield but given the notoriously buggy state of Bethesda RPGs at release, the thought of paying extra for the opportunity to dive into that pool first really does not appeal to me. That’s especially true for a singleplayer game, where I can’t even rub my elite, free-spending status in the faces of whatever the Starfield equivalent of “bare mares” turns out to be.
As someone with a 1/6 scale Terror Billy standing on the shelf behind me, I get it from the collector perspective, and that does look like a pretty sweet watch. But as far as jumping in early, I think I’d just as soon save a few bucks and let other people clear off the first round of bugs for me.