Do they have any idea how little that narrows it down?

I'll believe it when I see it. I'm not preordering anything anymore.

Most bugs don't show themselves right away, once it releases the combined play hours of all the internal testing will be surpassed within the first day. That's why there were 3 (so far) duplication glitches found in TOTK immediately when Nintendo had been looking for that sort of thing all throughout the development of the game.
Let's say 500,000 people download it on launch day and start playing it immediately and each play for an average of 6 hours, that's 3,000,000 hours of combined playtime.
Unless they have an enormous beta community they haven't got anywhere near that amount of testing in on the game.
I'm not saying there's not going to be less bugs than previous games, I do believe them on that because it being a flagship game from Xbox game studios they're going to put a lot of pressure on the team to get it right, but don't take that to mean there's no bugs at all and especially no game-breaking ones.
Keep your expectations tempered and please don't pre-order games.

Doubt

Doubt.

That’s one of the least reassuring statements I’ve ever seen a company make about their own product. They’re basically saying “it sucks less than the other stuff we’ve crapped out!”

Oh really? The famous and trustworthy reviewer of games 'Microsoft' is saying this? Are they competing with IGN next?

But did you see the sheer number of bugs on launch in previous Bethesda games? This is like saying "lighters are the least dangerous fire yet." Shit's still gonna burn your house down, yo.

That from a company that actually shipped Windows ME.

Sounds like an Onion headline.

Sooo slightly less crammed with them?

I mean i get it. They make super open world games that are very free form. Its got to be near impossible to make a bug free experience. As long as they still allow missing, they can get away with a lot.

But fallout 76 was a mistake. It will be a long week before i forget that.

Let's not trip over these bars we're setting here.

I consider Bethesda to be among my favorite game devs and even I know that this is cap 🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢

Okay so it has one less bug than the others... so still a massive amount of bugs

Knowing Bethesda that doesn't say much.

Is it just me or does ist sound like Trump?

"Nobody knows games better than me, believe me. Starfield, my incredible creation, will have fewer bugs than any game in history. I guarantee it, folks!"

…and they said Vista was better than XP.. Win 8 was better than 7.. Win 11 is better than Win 10. I’m not sure Microsoft is the best at compare/contrast.

Microsoft also says their OS is good

Doubt

OK, on one side, 9999 is less than 10000 and it doesn't make it any better. On another side, Microsoft is literally the one selling you the game. What the hell are they going to say? "Oh yeah, BTW, this is an unusable bug ridden fest! Hahaha! Bethesda right?"

Next on the news, ExxonMobil says CO2 emissions are not that bad... Jfc

Fewer than infinity is still infinity. That being said, the Starfield deep dive from the other day made the game look amazing. I hope it's good.

So we are still going to have a way above average number of bugs, just not the typical Bethesda amount 🤷.

I don't know that I'd brag about that. :)

I'd say my thoughts on that quote is:

Weird flex, but okay

Would Microsoft say...it just works? :D

I'm not great at high-level maths like that, but can infinities be sized different in a way that makes a comparison of quantity valid?