A lot of people bought Starfield because it was a Bethesda game. A lot of those people will re-consider the next time such a game comes out.
Even years later, people are willing to put up with all of Skyrim's jank, bugs, performance problems, terrible animations and visuals, bad story and the rest because the core gameplay loop of exploration is so strong. It carries the entire game.
Starfield is missing that core that holds it together.
