After debuting in early access for owners of the $100 Premium Edition (apparently over two million between PC and consoles), Starfield is officially out today for everyone else, including millions of Game Pass subscribers who are doubtlessly itching to play the new sci-fi roleplaying game made by Bethesda Game Studios.
On PC, the modding community has already released dozens of mods that improve the game in many ways. However, the Microsoft Store/Game Pass version of Starfield is a bit more limited in modding because the Starfield Script Extender is incompatible with it. The author of SFSE is the same behind the Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Script Extenders, and neither of those games ever received a compatible version of the Script Extender for Microsoft Store/Game Pass. There’s no current plan to make that happen for Starfield, so any mod requiring SFSE will only be compatible with the Steam version.
As such, those who try the game as part of their Game Pass subscription may want to eventually purchase Starfield on Steam to use those mods. However, there is no native cross-save support, and the file formats are completely different.
Luckily, modder Mark Mäkinen (also known as Z1ni) has made the game compatible with his XGP Save Extractor tool. By default, it requires the user to download the main.py file from the repository and run it with Python 3.10+ (which would have to be installed on your PC). The script then produces ZIP files for each supported game installed for the current user.
The creator of the tool also crafted a one-file executable that automatically converts the Microsoft Store/Game Pass Starfield files into the .SFS file format used by Steam. You just need to grab the converted files and copy them to the %USERPROFILE%DocumentsMy GamesStarfieldSaves folder. I’ve performed the conversion myself and can confirm it works perfectly well.
By the way, XGP Save Extraction also supports the following games:
- Yakuza 0
- Yakuza Like a Dragon
- Octopath Traveller
- Just Cause 4
- Hades
- Control
- Final Fantasy XV
- Atomic Heart
- Chorus
