This is a little unusual. Most games never explicitly say you need an SSD or a HDD - but Starfield does! This likely isn’t a hard limit, as recommendations are often just that, but I cannot help but wonder what would happen if the game is run on an HDD?
Is it really an engineering problem to not prioritize a slower storage medium?
Last gen consoles still had HDDs but with the newer gen using SSDs that’s what they seem to go for, rather than HDDs and are using the faster read speeds available to them. So with the current gen in mind and SSDs becoming more common to me it makes sense in that regard.
Now don’t get me wrong here this doesn’t mean developers should use this as an excuse to not optimize their game. But I can see how it could let some be lazy about it and push the issue onto hardware.
And I do agree that gameplay is what makes or breaks it, not fancy graphics. It’s why indie games can be so popular even with pixel graphics (not that all use pixel but you get the idea). But that doesn’t seem to be what they were aiming for.
As a long time follower of Bethesda, I’m not so sure.
Otherwise, I agree with your sentiment. I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense to use SSD’s at all, but I definitely personally feel like it is mostly bad developers leaning on the hardware rather than properly optimizing their games.
An example is that they’re already admitting that it will be locked to 30fps on consoles. That doesn’t tell me it is highly optimized, it tells me they are happy with lower framerates as long as it looks good. Once again, personal opinion.