Starfield is only out in early access at the moment, but that isn't stopping folks from turning up in their hundreds of thousands to play Bethesda's brand new RPG as soon as possible. Even if we only take the Steam player numbers into account, Starfield's early launch is looking like a mighty successful one for Microsoft & co.
Over on stats site SteamDB, Starfield has already hit a peak concurrent player count of 234,502 - at the time of writing anyway. Considering you have to pay $100 to play the game on Steam right now, we reckon they're pretty impressive numbers for what is effectively the 'day zero' launch.
Let's not forget that this number is a for a concurrent player count (players booting up the game at the very same time) and that it doesn't include any Xbox and Microsoft Store players who may have opted to pick up the much cheaper early access upgrade in combination with a Game Pass subscription.
Thankfully, the huge amount of day zero players will be greeted with a pretty smooth experience by the looks of it, including on console where Starfield appears to be Bethesda Game Studios' most polished launch in decades. Digital Foundry has some early technical details for us in its initial performance breakdown, which you can check out down below!
What do you think to these numbers? Any predictions on what the peak number will be come launch day? Drop your thoughts down below.
Comments 22
This afternoon my copy (upgrade edition Series X) arrives. As a big space enthousiast I've never been this stoked for a game in my life. I almost find it too intimidating to make the most out of it, if that makes sense. Like, I want to experience every detail of the universe and don't want to take a wrong approach that makes me miss things. I'm fully committed to play this game for the rest of the year at least.
Just paid for the early access series x
Game was already downloaded, but it’s doing a 15gb download now to let me play early access and an update I guess.
On the one hand good for them. On the other it's a shame they didn't launch for everyone on a Friday before the 3-day labor weekend in the US without having to pay a premium. Now to avoid inevitable spoilers for the next few weeks as other players race ahead. But it sounds like it's a game best experienced slowly anyway.
It's an impressive number considering it's still not a full release. I'm glad Bethesda and Xbox was able to pull off this immensely satisfying experience overcoming so much negativity and skepticism. They deserve all the praise they can get.
For some reason when we were shooting the breeze last night I multiplied the steam numbers at $30 x concurrent. So stupid I didn't think that they paid 100 balloons for the thing!
sheesh
234,502 x 100 bucks? Wow, that's a lot of money! Well done MS/Bethesda!
So that’s at least $23 million earned on the first day from STEAM alone.
This game is going to be making money for them for a long time.
@Darude84 have you played elite or no mans sky ,I found playing those games helped me a lot,there's been complaints that the ship handling is difficult ,I found it easy to be fair ,but if you can land on a planet in elite dangerous or manually Dock at a space station ,you will have no issues 😁 starfield borrows a lot from those two games ,from the mining and scanning of no mans sky ,to the ship power distribution of elite.
@Moonglow really? I uninstalled the game after the intro because I didn't like the ship handling. I didn't feel like I was flying a spaceship I felt like I was driving a Mario Kart. For me, it was too unrealistic in terms of physics and the enemies were out there just waiting for me to shoot them down.
@Cashews some paid $100, but there are more variables like international price fluctuations and who knows how many of those collectors editions were made, since they sold out. Those PC versions were all Steam, if delivered in time they all counted and cost $300 a pop.
As I expected, my fancy collectors edition is not going to be here until Saturday. Didn’t stop me from being an idiot and buying the $100 digital edition on the windows marketplace. So… I’m a $400 payee… unless you count how much I paid for other “junk” like the Starfield controller and that Starfield cover/wrap/skin for my Series X…
MS is making a lot of money out of this one.
No question, theres a huge thirst for this game and now Bethusda have delivered, surely the bulk of commited gamers would want to get lost in its charms!
Huge numbers, making a nice tidy sum for MS, who, lets face it, havent had to bankroll the development of the game for much of its dev time. Nice profit justifying the assertion that they dont need the PS market for this to be profitable.
Given the type of game it is, and how compelling many reviewers have been finding it, I'd expect player numbers to remain high for some time after the initial settling back..
@Tharsman your post is making me uncomfortable
@Moonglow that's awesome. I really wanted to like it I have a soft spot in my heart for space fighting games of yore. I'd give it another shot but...Starfield. Maybe another time.
It is the flight in SF that I am most looking forward to - I hope I am not disappointed.
@Cashews I also forgot to mention the Starfield headphones and that new song by Imagine Dragons being on iTunes for sale 😅
Oh and the funko pop….
I passed on those… well I did buy the song 🙃
This game is incredible the environment, music the whole atmosphere of the game has me hooked. Played about 10 hrs so far had no bugs just a few graphical issues but running great that said I got it for PC instead of Xbox. The only small issue which I hope is implemented is that we can take off and land on planets that would top it off for me. If anyone is on the fence about this game jump of it and get it. Totaly awesome RPG.
@Cherip-the-Ripper I mean, I’m terrible at maths so maybe?
My calculator says $100 x 234,502 = $23,450,200 (or $23.4m)
And that’s only concurrent players, not everyone who has bought the game and is yet to play it. And only on one platform.
All I’m saying is it’s a lot of money.
@tallythwack Thanks, haven’t played either…
@Kienda nah nvm you're right, apparently I suck even harder at maths haha
@Moonglow its a bit floaty ,lot of drift ,could be just the starter ship I dunno
That's crazy and it's still on EARLY ACCESS. Whoever managed to get to play the game right now, enjoy your time and just ignore Bethesda's persistent overwhelming hate & mockery out there.
Glad to see it's mostly been receiving positive feedback. I think Starfield is going to be a good example of what flaws mean to different players. Reviewers that I've seen give the game high praise are still pointing out flaws alongside people that are more critical. I'm guessing to them what's good about the game is so good that the flaws don't really bug them. Which is not going to be the same for everyone. Games like Marvel's Spider-Man, Metroid Prime 2, and Assassin's Creed III are masterpieces to me. They very much have flaws (apparent ones too) but to me the highs are so high that the flaws never really bug me. I'm looking forward to seeing where Starfield falls into the pantheon for me.
I wouldn’t exactly say $100… This is PC gaming after all, you would be stupid to pay day 1 Steam prices. I got my premium edition for $70 with $5 cash back. 🤣
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