Starfield Tops 10 Million Players - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 19 September 2023 / 5,598 Views

Bethesda announced Starfield has surpassed 10 million players. This figure is up from six million players as of the morning of September 7.

"Thank you to more than 10 million Starfield explorers for creating the biggest launch in Bethesda history," announced Bethesda via the official Starfield Twitter account.

Starfield also had the biggest Xbox launch of the generation in Europe with it selling more than the previous record holder Forza Horizon 5 and is the fifth-fastest selling game of 2023 in Europe and the fastest-selling new IP of the year.

On launch day the game topped 1 million concurrent players across all platforms. The RPG also reached 234,502 concurrent players on Steam in its first two hours of Early Access on September 1.

Thank you to more than 10 million #Starfield explorers for creating the biggest launch in Bethesda history. pic.twitter.com/jklQotDC1N
— Starfield (@StarfieldGame) September 19, 2023

Starfield released for the Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass on September 6.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

19 Comments

zero129 (on 19 September 2023)

It deserves it. This is my game of the gen. So much to do and see its hge but in a good way. And i cant wait for the proper mods. This game is going to be around and talked about for years just like Skyrim if not more so.

shikamaru317 (on 19 September 2023)

This makes Starfield Xbox's 2nd fastest player growth game, behind only Forza Horizon 5, which hit 10m players in the first week, compared to almost 3 weeks since early access launch for Starfield here. Halo Infinite, we never got a 10m figure for it, though it hit 20m a bit more than 2 months after it's F2P multiplayer launch.

smroadkill15 shikamaru317 (on 19 September 2023)

Considering Starfield is current gen only while Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite are cross-gen, makes it even more impressive.

DekutheEvilClown smroadkill15 (on 20 September 2023)

G2ThaUNiT DekutheEvilClown (on 20 September 2023)

What are you talking about? FH4 sold 10 million copies after the first 8 months on the market. With FH5 well surpassing that. Skyrim 60M was after 10 years, and Fallout 4 quickly dropped player numbers after launch maintaining the hardcore fanbase. Bethesda games are known for their longevity. This 10M players will only continue to grow faster than other games typically would.

I do agree with you though that it isn’t the gen defining megahit, but it’s still a major hit that Xbox needed.

DekutheEvilClown G2ThaUNiT (on 20 September 2023)

FH4 had 10 million users, not sales.

The last time MS revealed sales was 16m units of the Forza Franchise upto December 2016, which covers the first 6 Motorsports games and the first 3 Horizon games.

shikamaru317 DekutheEvilClown (on 20 September 2023)

You're understimating Forza Horizon methinks, SteamSpy has Horizon 4 in the 2-5m sales range, and even if it's Steam sales are on the low end of that range, it probably would have sold more copies on Xbox than Steam (as racing games tend to be more popular on console than on PC), so it probably sold at least 5m copies lifetime. But more important than sales is player data, Forza series is very player heavy due to being day one Gamepass ever since Gamepass released. Forza Horizon 4 officially hit 24m players by 2020 (with unofficial figures pointing to 30m+ lifetime players). And Horizon 5 has been tracking above Horizon 4 to each of it's player count milestones, for instance Horizon 5 hit 10m players in 1 week, Horizon 4 took 8 months to hit 10m players, Horizon 5 hit 20m players in 7 months, 1 month less than it took Horizon 4 to hit just 10m players, Horizon 5 hit 30m players in a year and a half, took Horizon 4 two years to hit just 24m players. Horizon 5 is a game that is tracking towards 40m+ lifetime players.

Starfield is doing very well, even if it is a bit behind Horizon 5 right now. You have to remember that on console it is exclusive to a console that has currently only sold 23m units, which limited it's reach on launch a good bit compared to past Bethesda games. Even though it's maximum possible console install base on launch was about half of what Fallout 4 released onto in 2015 (23m Xbox Series compared to a combined 45m PS4+XB1 in November 2015) , it still hit 10m players faster than Fallout 4 or Skyrim hit 10m sales. And Starfield will have legs as the number of Xbox Series units sold more than doubles and the number of Gamepass subs continues to increase during the remaining 5 or so years of the generation. Official mod support addition early next year will boost it, the story DLC's will boost it, it could be bundled with S or X this Holiday for all we know, if Xbox ever decides to enable Gamepass on Steam that will boost it loads, lots of things that can boost it's player count legs. Starfield will almost certainly hit at least 30m players before the end of this generation, with even 40m players being within the realm of possibility.

DekutheEvilClown shikamaru317 (on 20 September 2023)

You’re comparing player count of a game on a subscription service to game sales at full price. It’s extremely hard to compare these 2 metrics.

FH5 had 20m players in 7 months. If that hadn’t been on a subscription how many actual sales would it have got? 5M? That seems quite generous but go with that, 5M sales in 7 months. So if Starfield had the same conversion of players to sales rate(assuming it was a non-subscription game only available at full price) then those 40m players lifetime become 10m sales? 10m sales lifetime is incredibly anaemic compared to big games like Cyberpunk(13m in launch month), Elden Ring( 13.4m in 6 weeks), GoW: Ragnarok(11m in 3 months), Tear of the Kingdom(10m in launch week)

shikamaru317 DekutheEvilClown (on 20 September 2023)

I think Starfield would have sold alot more than 10m lifetime if it wasn't day one gamepass. Consider that Bethesda's last 2 games, Fallout 4 and Skyrim, seem to have sold 30m+ and 60m+ lifetime respectively. Now obviously Starfield was going to do less than those because a. it is a new IP rather than a sequel in an already popular franchise, and b. it's on less platforms due to Xbox exclusivity. However, I do think it is a fairly safe bet that Starfield would have launched to at least 3m first week sales (compared to Fallout 4 selling approximately 3.5m first week on PC and Xbox One), lifetime sales on Xbox Series/PC by the end of this generation likely would have been in the neighborhood of 17-20m probably (because Bethesda games tend to leg very well), with more coming next-gen on a likely next-gen update since Bethesda likes to do those.

smroadkill15 DekutheEvilClown (on 20 September 2023)

Gotta love the downplay! It's a very successful game at the beginning of its release life cycle. Player count is what matters to Xbox now. Get over it.

Giggity_goo smroadkill15 (on 21 September 2023)

has been alot of people trying it on xbox one via x-cloud that will count as a player has been hour long waits to use it lately

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smroadkill15 (on 19 September 2023)

Well deserved! It might not be the GOTY some expected, but it's still a great game and continues to surprise me with all the fun things to constantly discover.

halil23 (on 21 September 2023)

If m$ never had the ability to lie (it unfortunate they lie all the time)
m$ : 10 million users, not sales.

-4

VersusEvil halil23 (on 21 September 2023)

Congratulations, you managed to read exactly what they said.

halil23 VersusEvil (on 26 September 2023)

Tell that to some of the xbox kids that insist it sales instead of users....

LivncA_Dis3 (on 20 September 2023)

G2ThaUNiT LivncA_Dis3 (on 20 September 2023)

And you know this by your own experience playing it?

Libara G2ThaUNiT (on 20 September 2023)

I think we all know the answer to that lol.

TheTitaniumNub LivncA_Dis3 (on 20 September 2023)

No where even close to the lies that CD RED spewed leading up to launch. The leading up to launch of 2077 is probably the scummiest move the industry has seen so far, to use your goodwill and trust from the players against them like that, nah, I will never support CD RED again.
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation, it takes 5 minutes (or in this case, greed) to destroy it."