[Update 8/21] Xbox studio InXile Entertainment has commented on the matter below with a rather sarcastic tweet. Unfortunately, the tweet has since been deleted but on Reddit someone seemingly managed to grab what the studio wrote on Twitter:

　　"We are moving all dev resources off the game and onto the start screen. The campaign will be 45 minutes long but the start screen will be 20+ hours."

　　[Original story] Bethesda's Pete Hines has taken to Twitter to comment on a recent tweet about Starfield's start screen from former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern.

　　Yesterday, Kern posted a tweet about Starfield's start screen, stating that start screens can reveal a lot about the game's development and how the development team feels about their work on a particular game. According to the former Blizzard employee, the start screen of Bethesda's highly-anticipated title shows either hurried deadlines or a lack of interest. "The physiognomy of start screens", Kern wrote on Twitter yesterday. "The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work. Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care."

　　In his follow-up tweet, he wrote, "Start screens are often done at the very end of development". He then said that "Teams that take pride want to put a good face forward and will often redo these just prior to the game going live."

　　Start screen are often done at the very end of development.

　　Teams are too busy making the core game.

　　It's quite common for the start screen to completely change once the game is shipping or on patch 0.

　　Teams that take pride want to put a good face forward and will often redo…

　　— Grummz (@Grummz) August 19, 2023

　　Apparently, these comments from Kern didn't sit well with Bethesda's Head of Publishing, Pete Hines. According to Hines, Starfield's start screen has been the same for years and was actually one of the first things that the development team settled on. In addition, Hines said that Kern's comments are quite unprofessional coming from another developer.

　　"Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on", Hines wrote on Twitter. He continued, "Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s “care” because you would have done it differently is highly unprofessional coming from another “dev”."

　　Honestly, we kind of like Starfield's start screen - it's clean and provides a glimpse at what the game's about. What is your take on this matter? Hit the comments below

　　Starfield releases globally for PC and Xbox Series X|S on September 6th. The game is Bethesda's first entirely new IP in 25 years. Be sure to read our 'Everything you need to know' article about the game for more interesting details. Down below we've included the game's PC specifications:

　　MINIMUM:

　　OS: Windows 10 version 2004 (10.0.19041.0)

　　Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600x, Intel Core i7-6800K

　　Memory: 16 GB RAM

　　Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti

　　DirectX: Version 12

　　Storage: 125 GB available space

　　Additional Notes: SSD Required

　　RECOMMENDED:

　　OS: Windows 10/11 with updates

　　Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K

　　Memory: 16 GB RAM

　　Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080

　　DirectX: Version 12

　　Storage: 125 GB available space

　　Additional Notes: SSD Required