Starfield Exceeds 1 Million Concurrent Players on Launch Day

Tsing

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Starfield appears to be quite the success for Microsoft and Bethesda Game Studios, having exceeded a million concurrent players on the day of its official launch. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, shared the news in a tweet yesterday, thanking all of the Xbox fans, Bethesda fans, and other players who made this milestone possible. Spencer included a photo that shows off all of the great scores that Starfield has received from various publications, although IGN and Gamespot, both of which gave the game a 7, appear to be missing.

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I mean it is on games pass, so everybody will try it right? I want to hear the number who actually bought the game. On steam it's all time peak is barely the current BG3 player count, which came out over a month ago.

I'm loving the game, but this is not the win they make it out to be. With all the anticipation this should've crushed BG3.
 
Well, I was also curious what launch day looked like and here you go.

1694257432261.png

Basically it almost made it to 270,000 players but seems to be averaging around 193,000-194,000. At the moment it's sitting at #6, three slots below BG3, but significantly lower at 193.932 vs 272,886. However, I agree that given the hype it should've been higher.

1694257657434.png
 
Basically it almost made it to 270,000 players but seems to be averaging around 193,000-194,000. At the moment it's sitting at #6, three slots below BG3, but significantly lower at 193.932 vs 272,886. However, I agree that given the hype it should've been higher.
There is one silver lining though that with early access they basically had two launches significantly flattening the official launch day numbers. I'd wager that without early access the launch day peak would've been in the 400-500k range on steam.
 
Doesn't that only show the Steam figures? You can get the game on the Microsoft store as well which isn't listed on the Steam count, correct?
 
So. . . .

 
These days though the options for reporting such things come down to recording it all, or as much as possible, or trying to filter according to specific exclusives and Sony and Microsoft are both making that messy.
 
There's no way to verify it since XBGP/console figures aren't published. Just have to take their word for it.

I wouldn't be surprised. With Steam as the only data point we have available - I would have bet Steam would be the least popular of the storefronts for this particular title and a lot of people are just checking it out on XBGP

Again, no firm numbers reported for XXBGP subscriptions either, but a year ago Microsoft claimed to have 25M subs to the service in their financial reporting. So that's a big base of people who could just check this game out without plunking down any additional cash - it would make for some great Day 1 hype headlines.

We'll see how it's doing in a couple of weeks...
 
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There is one silver lining though that with early access they basically had two launches significantly flattening the official launch day numbers. I'd wager that without early access the launch day peak would've been in the 400-500k range on steam.
What does that say for lyrian studios. Bg3 was in pre release for three years.
 
What does that say for lyrian studios. Bg3 was in pre release for three years.
It wasn't a complete game, it was pre-alpha. Plus it wasn't even marketed, I lliterally haven't even heard about Baldurs Gate 3 until a few weeks before the actual release. Even those who already played the incomple versions only got access to the final game the same time as everybody else.
 
... Plus it wasn't even marketed, I lliterally haven't even heard about Baldurs Gate 3 until a few weeks before the actual release. ...
That is confirmation bias and speaks to your gaming haunts. Baldur's Gate 3 was available as early access for three years on GoG, and it even went on sale several times during that period. It headlined that site's store many times. I would bet that it was also marketed on Steam. So it seems, perhaps, you were just not paying attention. Maybe it's not your cup of tea and you dismissed it outright. That happens. We're all human.
 
That is confirmation bias and speaks to your gaming haunts. Baldur's Gate 3 was available as early access for three years on GoG, and it even went on sale several times during that period. It headlined that site's store many times. I would bet that it was also marketed on Steam. So it seems, perhaps, you were just not paying attention. Maybe it's not your cup of tea and you dismissed it outright. That happens. We're all human.
Then why did I notice it when it was closer to release? Did I suddenly get interested in it? Or did they ramp up marketing and it reached further and wider? But I guess everybody has confirmation bias because peak player count was around 30k prior to the official release. Hardly the number that would significantly alter the player count for the actual release. Starfield had two equal peaks on the 1st and 6th. So you might need to re-evaluate who has the confirmation bias here :p
 
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