Starfield exceeds 6 million players, becomes Bethesda's biggest game launch

Bethesda's latest RPG Starfield has surpassed 6 million players, making it the biggest Bethesda game launch of all time.

[shadowT]

Fallout 4 shipped 12 million copies on launch day, according to Bethesda.

[Jin_Sakai]

Everyone fell for the hype. That and Xbox fans are thirsty.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

It’s going to be okay.

Now back to Starfield 😊

[GhostScholar]

Like you wouldn’t be playing it if it was on ps5. I wish it was on everything too, but don’t be silly and act like it’s not a good game.

[SPEAKxTHExTRUTH]

You mad bro?

[PhillyDonJawn]

Shhhh, everythings going to be okay baby *caresses hair* I wish I could play too.

[Sonic1881]

@GhostScholar

I agree that it's a good game but it's not great. It's not better than Elders Scrolls or Fallout. Starfield was overhyped by Xbox fans saying it would be the GOTY

[S2Killinit]

Question is how many are on gamepass? How many will stop playing it after a try.

Show us the breakdown.

[MatrixxGT]

Jesus dude, do you go outside? It’s a decent game. Get over it.

[shinoff2183]

Ghostscholar, at some point you just have to admit maybe stsrfield just isn't for everyone. Not me I bought my xbox for it but if this was a new elder scrolls game instead I wouldn't be interested. My favorite game from them is fallout and prey, probably stsrfield to once I get more time in. Just realize not everyone is interested in a space rpg just like it takes alot for me to be interested in a medieval type of rpg

[-Foxtrot]

I looked this up and I guess you are right, they did

https://www.gamespot.com/ar...

So why are they saying here that THIS is the biggest launch? If 12 million people bought the game then surely it means 12 million were playing at launch.

[Snookies12]

Shipping 12 million is not the same as selling 12 million. Retailers have to order extra copies beyond any that were pre-ordered to have them in stock as well. Granted, I haven't really looked into the sales of Starfield or Fallout 4. Just pointing out that shipping and selling copies are quite different.

[Lightning77]

It's shipped vs sold. skyrim shipped 7 million copies but sold 3.5 million. Fallout 4 actually sold13.5 million copies as of 2021. Maybe Fallout did 4 or 5 million sales wise.

Since Xbox entry to gaming is through gamepass (and conventional means) players counts can be much higher as we've seen here.

If you want actual SF sales yeah MS won't give that out. IMO Bethesda needs to give that out if MS won't release sales figures since they're being ran semi independently and all.

[VenomUK]

What counts as a player to Microsoft? My understanding that it’s a person who has launched the game once.

For Starfield, and all other games, Microsoft can also measure how many people played for different time increments eg 1-2 hours, 2-3 hours etc. it would be insightful to know how many players as a percentage have played for five or more hours then you can see how many people are playing padded the intro.

[Sonic1881]

How many people of the 12 million played it on gamepass for a $10 dollar monthly subscription? That's what I wanna know

[senorfartcushion]

This is very company in America. Happens every major launch for Xbox and PlayStation

[shinoff2183]

Keyword bought. We will probably never know how many we're bought.

[GotGame818]

Shipped, isn't SOLD. It also isn't current players.

[Kakashi Hatake]

Players is an awful indicator. I'd take shipped as a better indicator than people that downloaded and pressed start. By that logic, Sony can add downloads to their sales numbers of games like Ratchet and Clank. Keep drinking the kool aid Xbots.

[Lightning77]

Now that's more like it. Yes I made a slip up. 1 million concurrent players is very, very good. I thought it was 1 million players.

6 million players exceeds Forza Horizon 5 by a million. I can't find the stat for Halo at launch 343 didn't post.

Regardless the most played Bethesda game at launch is also pretty incredible.

[Crows90]

Likely also the least sold. When you practically give out a free game ...yeah..more people will grab it.

Gamepass for PC is quite cheap through Ms edge rewards...

[Lightning77]

Yeah that's the plan for MS. Tango game works aren't complaining. They expanded there studio and Pere Hines said that studio will take more risks and future support that studio more all because of one game All through GP. I dunno how the the pay goes but that's not for us to worry about.

Off topic but Todd also teased Indiana Jones to be shown off next year. Possibly next E3 hopefully. More Bethesda goodness.

[Sonic1881]

Gamepass for PC is quite cheap through Ms edge rewards...

Hey, that's supposed to be a secret. We don't want the whole world to know that. Microsoft has been saving me money bro.

[FPS_D3TH]

Literally just saying what everybody even microsoft knows and acknowledges. They don’t expect subscribers to buy a copy of every game on gamepass they enjoy lmao

[PunksOnN4G]

Halo Launch Numbers was 20mil in the 1st week idk about concurrent. buit Halo was much bigger then starfield in my eyes

[Lightning77]

No it wasn't. That was reported in January 25 2022 not first week. There are no first week numbers for Halo Infinite. Anymore lies I can clear up? I can do this all day, and I often do.

[ChasterMies]

Don’t know about Halo Infinite, but the at the apex of Halo, Halo 3 had 1M concurrent players at launch and 13M lifetime sales on Xbox 360. On the high end estimate, Halo 3 May have sold 8M in the first week. That was on Xbox 360 only.

[Reaper22_]

I'm loving this game. Definitely one of the best ever. Huge win for Microsoft. Congrats to Phil for making this happen for xbox gamers. Game of the year for sure.

[Soulsborne]

Youre giving credit the the wrong person here, also its on PC where it will thrive longer....

[Reaper22_]

Youre right. I also thank Sony and Jim Ryan for failing to keep the game on playstation and helping the PC version that will thrive longer and make Microsoft even more money. From the bottom of my heart I thank you.☺️

[Lightning77]

Phil's team was responsible for the games overall polish of the game Advance Technology Group or ATG came in early last year to tighten everything up. I was pissed like everyone else when the delayed was called but definitely well worth it. Anyway MS granted them a delay out of last year for said polish. There's some hitches here and there not 100% perfect but it's a absolute farcry from past Bethesda games that's for sure. It's doesn't have that classic Bethesda jank.

No MS wasn't there at the start of development obviously but they certainly helped Bethesda reach the Finish line.

[senorfartcushion]

Phil Spencer is quite careless with game launches. Starfield only shipped in a relatively polished state because the last few MS exclusives shipped in terrible conditions. Forza is the only series that shipped in a good state prior to this game

[BaughJaughs]

Gears has always been high quality on launch too.

[Armaggedon]

Get ready to be crucified for liking it.lol

[vTuro24]

What did Phil do other than take it away from Playstation?

[shinoff2183]

Jackbnimble, you guys get 1 actually good game in the last decade and suddenly jump on the high horse. Lol. Yall funny. Ps I'm playing through starfield so don't trip

[vTuro24]

JackBNimble who are you calling a "Sony Fanboy"? Overly sensitive much? I play on pc you clown. It makes no difference to make if Starfield makes it to PS or not and I'm not even talking about the quality of the game. I asked a simple question. What did Phil actually do to deserve praise? The game was going to come to Xbox regardless.

[andy85]

For you maybe, it may not even make the shortlist, and FFXVI might not either.

[PunksOnN4G]

6mil?? Thats it out of 30mil gamepass subs,Mobile,console stream,Samsung tvs, Tablets LOL. But xbox kids were sayign GOW:R was a fail with 5.1mil sold in 3days at 70$ a POP LOL

[Soulsborne]

Why is the weeb crying

[Reaper22_]

No need to be salty over it. Starfield deserves all the praise it's getting. It's a really good game and there's nothing else like it on consoles or PC. It's a huge win for xbox whether people want to admit it or not. It's clear now why Sony was so against this being exclusive. This game alone is gonna make xbox a lot of money.

[PunksOnN4G]

More money yet Sony this year during the marketing Quarter double what xbox did stop bro you xbox kids be lyign and coping :) Nice try though

[Soileh]

I find it amazing that so much of Starfield defense has reduced down to "there is nothing else like it." NMS exists and does exploration better than Starfield. I can already predict your next response which would be "but NMS isn't as good an RPG as Starfield!" Well sure, but Starfield isn't as good an RPG as BG3, so it's not an argument. Starfield's scope is is most defining feature - in a bad way. This is what most people will remember it by, and judging by the user scores on metacritic, the slowly decreasing user reviews on Steam, the poor reviews on Xbox store (2.8/5 from people who PAID for the game to have the privilege of leaving a review) it's going to be remembered as a weak game in the end. Certainly inferior to previous BGS games.

[Soileh]

Yeah the numbers are pretty bad once you dig down into all the metrics. BG3 had one million CCUs almost on Steam alone, and by Phil's Spencer's admission of 1m CCUs (meaning 1:4 Steam to Xbox platform) 75% of the players of the game are on Xbox, where the game is free on Game Pass. So 6m players is not good, because they are not sales. BG3 cost full price on release, but managed 1m CCUs, and Starfield was free to play for 30m people accounting 75% of the CCUs, and could only manage the same. Fallout 4 did over 5m sales (to consumers) in the first week, and this has been out a week and only managed 6m PLAYERS, not sales. I'm sure it's acceptable for their metrics, and Xbox doesn't care about taking a loss on the $400m dev costs to get it on Game Pass, but still it's a large decrease from their previous releases, and considering this game was hyped to be "game of the generation" by so many people, but could only manage as many PLAYERS, not sales, as BG3 I think it's safe to say Starfield massively underperformed.

[Lightning77]

I'm sorry who said these things? Where's your proof?

Besides we're you expecting 20 million in one day? Yeah right. That's like saying Gow should of done 20 million in a few days after launch. Not freakin happening try harder.

[PunksOnN4G]

God of war R. Sold 5.1mil in 3days at 70$ a pop Bud dont disrespect GOD OF WAR R with starfield trash homie

[PhillyDonJawn]

1 game had an install base of 100million.
And you think 1/4th reach is nothing? That's amazing. GOW would've had to sold 25-30 million to reach that ratio

[Lightning77]

You said ppl said GoW failed with 5.1 million sales at 70$ I don't remember seeing anyone making fun. You're just making stuff up because of course you are.

I'm not comparing nothin what you said didn't make any damn sense at all.

[thesoftware730]

Who said GOW:R was a failure? Could you point me to where that was said?

You might be making things up, That was not a general consensus on here.

Also, It's pretty standard for an entire user base not to like, play, download, or buy a game. A good example would be the Stellar Super Mario Odyssey, Switch has like 125 million units sold, and Mario, arguably the biggest franchise ever only sold 27 million. Same for Pokemon, 20+ for a system with 125 mill userbase.

Your comment is silly.

[ChasterMies]

Not surprising. Even the best games with the broadest appeal like Spider-Man will sell to less than a quarter of the install base. Even when you give a game away, like publishers did with Lego games and Horizon Zero Dawn during the pandemic, you won’t see the needle move much. That’s why Bethesda was a $7.5B purchase and not a $70B purchase.

[Profchaos]

So 50% of the fallout 4 day 1 player base is celebration worthy?

[porkChop]

Bethesda "shipped" 12 million copies of Fallout 4 for launch day. Shipped does not equal bought.

[Gameseeker_Frampt]

"Shipped does not equal bought"

Neither does Starfield's 6 million players since a majority of them are playing through Gamepass.

[Charlieboy333]

Do retailers not pay for the copies that are shipped to them ?

[porkChop]

@Frampt
No one said it did.

@Charlie
A bit irrelevant considering Profchaos specifically mentioned "day 1 player base". Typically game sales are only ever reported as sold through.

[ChasterMies]

In today’s subscription gaming world, played does not equal bought.

[porkChop]

@Deus
Agreed.

[randomvoice]

Don't they have 25 million odd gamepass subscribers? So only 1/4th decided to try out the game which was basically
'free'? These numbers mean nothing lol. Of course anyone subscribed will eventually try it out after so much hype. Might as well also brag about how many shots were fired in the game while you're at it.

[Elda]

If you're subscribing to GP for a fee then playing Starfield through GP is not at all free.

[MrNinosan]

If you already have GamePass, the downloading it is free.
Everyone SHOULD download Starfield who has GamePass, as it's the first and only good game in a very long time on the service, especially on Xbox.

[Traecy]

I agree. Anytime you have to pay money to use Gamepass to play Starfield or any other game on the service it is not for free. People saying that it's free evidently have no clue what free is.

[randomvoice]

I never questioned that. But you can easily get gamepass for 15$/month and still play the game for 'free' for a month which is much lower than the MSRP. So the whole 6 million number is just inflated stats that mean nothing.

Also, I bought gamepass for 150$/3 years when the deal was still active earlier this year. I'm literally a loss for them since I would have easily bought the game for 70$ if it wasn't on the service and same goes for the other few games including upcoming games. As a consumer, it is a great deal for me but from a business perspective, no wonder they're pulling back on the conversion deals and increasing prices because it is probably bleeding money from them.

[andy85]

That's not including the steam players either so it's much less than 1/4. But 6 million is still a decent number trying it

[talocaca]

The power of "free".

I have GamePass so I'll probably try it this weekend but otherwise would not pay $60~70 for it.

Didn't they brag at some point about RedFall having over a million players? 😅

[PunksOnN4G]

Xbox kids bragged for years Gamepass leads to more sells which never happened. Outriders was day 1 gamepass and they said taking the gamepass deal was not a good idea cuz now they have yet to turn a single profit. We seen Many top ends devs say gamepass destroys sales

[PunksOnN4G]

Also like to point out people who paid the 35$ to play it early with gamepass YOU DONT EVEN OWN THE GAME YOU JST BOUGHT AL LTHE EXTRA DLC STUFF AND THATS EVEN MROE FUNNY AHAHAHAH.

[PhillyDonJawn]

Lmao hows your subscription service going?

"TBH as a PS fan since the ps1 i been with ps plus since the PS3 i have never missed a payment. I AM DONE..... 100% DONE. This is the last inch for me... I been wanting to make the jump to PC fully now i can sell the PS5 and get a very decent GPU for my PC build i am done with Sony...."
😬🤭 if only starfield came to psplus Sony would've retained you. Now I see why you mad

[thesoftware730]

@ Philly,

You served him some hot steaming crow!

@Punk, you should stop posting for a while now, No one should take you seriously.

[Einhander1972]

So Gamepass has 25m subs and they could only get 6 million people to download the game?

This whole day one games and buying these big studios is going to blow up in their faces. There is no way subscritpion fees are going to pay for big budgets if this is all they can draw. Especially when whatever sales the game is actually getting are likely on PC/Steam.

[Elda]

Though there are 25 million GP subs it's a great possibility that majority of those subscribers have no interest in playing a space rpg such as Starfield their interest may lie in playing other games on GP.

[purple101]

Game of the generation no?

Muahahha

[PhillyDonJawn]

Congratulations, well deserved. Lmao the salt in the comments is insane trying to downplay an amazing achievement.

[ironmonkey]

Lol says the pretend sony subscriber since 1847. Now you can afford to pretend and buy a very decent GPU as you said. Go get em tiger.

[PhillyDonJawn]

Lol you got me confused with PunksN4g . I was quoting a post he made saying he's done with ps plus after the price increase

[raWfodog]

It’d be interesting to see if they will release information regarding any increase in game pass subscriptions which I believe is their number one goal. 6 million players on day one is very impressive indeed, but it may be considered a letdown on the business side if no substantial new revenue is generated.

[MrNinosan]

6 million downloads is pretty good.
I'd say the 5,1 million sales of God of War Ragnarok in 3 days are a bit better thou.

Enjoying my time with Starfield since I started to ignore the negative parts about the game.

[Stuart5756]

Everyone saying 'you wish you could play too'. Its not 2007 anymore, the war was over a long time ago. One time, ONE, and xbots are blowing on the trumpet of victory. As a GAMER I can play Starfield, as a PS5 owner I can play TLOU & God of War, but guess what, one game isn't enough to justify buying an XBOX (just yet). four or five, yes, but one?!? I hope there are more to come, because a 2 console current gen setup is fine by me, I can afford it, its not 'one or the other' unless one isn't worth buying, which it isn't, even with Starfield (only Starfield). Just bought a 360 E 250gb console though (for very cheap), all those classics to re-visit, can't wait. Gear of War playthrough, lovely.

[MatrixxGT]

I bought ps5 at launch, then when ms bought zenimax I knew what the deal was so I grabbed a X. Only toxic keyboard warriors fuel this made up “war”.
Wonder how the narrative would be spun if Sony had bought zenimax.

[bRuud83]

But how many people have actually bought the game? I guess most people are playing the game thru Game Pass.

[gerbintosh]

As other people have stated, 6 million players does not equate to 6 million copies sold. If they had sold this much the would have also announced it but i guess a majority of players are using game pass.

Bethesda has learned MS word Jijitsu

[obidanshinobi]

I've played about 3 hours so far, the next Skyrim or Fallout 3 it really isn't.
Thank god I only paid £9 for a months Gamepass, was tempted to pre-order a physical copy for £60 before but so glad I didn't now.
God awful UI and inventory, mediocre combat, abysmal skill system, the game is a chore to play.
Playing on Series X and I'm sorry but I do not see why it isn't 60fps. Cyberpunk 2077 looks miles better in it 60fps mode. I'd be surprised if the base Xbox One couldn't run Starfield at dynamic 720- 1080p at 30fps.
Runs smooth at 30fps on Series X though, it's not a stutter fest on a big modern 4K TV which was my main concern.
But again, it's not visually impressive at all (on Series X), we've already had much better looking big open world games run at 60fps on current consoles.
It's a 10 year old game with a slight lick of modern paint to it.
Will play some more over the weekend but so far it's struggling to hold my attention and patience.
Meh, 6/10 so far. That may rise though once I've put more hours in, I've heard it does start poorly.

[Father__Merrin]

Starfield has low sales on copies sold

[Vengeance1138]

What's with the alphabet ppl colors? Really embracing pronounfield lol RIP immersion and escapism.

[EasilyTheBest]

The Salt in here is insane.
This site is home to the play it down champions.

[Battlestar23]

Congrats on 6 million copies sold and i can see it being 12-16 million copies sold by the end of next week.. I wonder how many are playing the game via gamepass? I can easily see this game having up to 20 millions concurrent players as of now.

[Hereandthere]

Its not 6 million sold bro, its 6 million players . Very different.

[Battlestar23]

Your wrong it's 6 million copies sold.

[MrNinosan]

Not so bright, are you?

[Hereandthere]

Starfield is a very boring last gen looking game honestly, i would not pay full price if i had to, game looks graphically ugly, runs at 30 fps unless you have a high end pc.

[gold_drake]

id love to see the split between actual sales and gamepass downloads

[xfiles2099]

Yeah but what they won't say is more than half are from gamepass

[Sgt_Slaughter]

Always with the fluff, instead of copies sold it's "players" because they know GamePass killed the sales

[PRIMORDUS]

It's pretty much Skyrim in space, and I played enough of Skyrim years ago. I'm burned out with this genre now. 😔

[UltimateOwnage]

Thank GamePass players dabbling for a few minutes of load screens for an inflated headline. Good play MS!