Bethesda's new space RPG Starfield has been a huge success for Xbox since it arrived on Game Pass and multiple platforms in September. In less than a month it surpassed 10 million players and since then, it's had ongoing success in the charts.
Now, in an update during Microsoft's latest earnings call for FY24 Q1, the tech giant's CEO Satya Nadella has revealed Starfield set a record "on launch" for "the most Game Pass subscriptions added on a single day ever".
No specific figures have been shared, but what we do know is that the game is now also Bethesda's biggest game launch of all time. This factors in the Xbox Series X|S and PC releases as well as Game Pass subscriptions.
Starfield appears to have also contributed to Microsoft's gaming revenue gains in the previous quarter, with the company up by 9%.
Did you subscribe to Game Pass for Starfield? Are you still subbing for the same title? Tell us below.
Comments 40
Already had a sub but it's my game of the year.
Think it's going to be my comfort game for months if not years - I've popped away to do a few Forza Motorsport races for example but like coming back to a game that's always got new things to discover...
That and I love my big ugly green spaceship!
On the Game Pass side, this game has already got some of my friends considering Game Pass Ultimate to try it out on the cloud and consider upgrading their PCs to play it which is something as console-wise they're hardcore PS5ers
I resubbed for Starfield after cancelling in May. Got bored of Starfield after about 50 hours (disappointment of the year for me) and haven't touched it in weeks but will stay subbed for Forza, which I’m loving, and keen to try Jusant. Not sure there’s anything else in the near future I am interested in so will probably keep lapsing and resubbing when there’s something I want to play.
@GeeEssEff not questioning your disappointment; but 50 hours is pretty good going surely? Very few games have kept my attention much longer than that!
@K1LLEGAL exactly it's just in right now to rip on the game because it didn't cure cancer or convince your girlfriend to do that thing u wanted her to do that she won't plays 50 hours n hates it makes no sense
@K1LLEGAL happy to justify mate. I really enjoyed it for the first few weeks. And thought I would be playing it for years to come. Then it just started getting very samey. Same mission structure, same process of getting new powers, same trek back to a shop to manage my inventory, same enemies, same wildlife models on planets, same everything just in different barren environments. I loaded up cyberpunk on 2.0 release just to see what it’s like and basically haven’t gone back to Starfield since. It felt like it did loads of stuff but none of it particularly well so allot of my time with it was exploring these systems and finding that I didn’t particularly love any of them. Also didn’t help I have been playing Baldurs gate along side which really highlights the illusion of choice most RPGs present. If Starfield came out in any other year I probably would have been way more into it but it’s competing with too many exceptional games atm which show it’s weak points.
@ebony-shabba chill out not everything is a personal attack on you. I didn’t say I hate it I said it was a disappointment…the reason I say this is because the Bethesda buyout is basically the reason I bought a series x with Starfield being the main game I have been excited for since it was announced. Bethesda is one of my fav publishers with Elder Scrolls and fallout being among my fav series. To me (because believe it or not I’m entitled to my opinion) Starfield would have been much better if it tried to scale back, do less and focus on core gameplay. Is that ok? am I allowed to have a negative opinion about an Xbox game? Or do I need to love absolutely everything about Xbox because I could wax lyrical about Forza for hours if you want?
TBH I agree with everything you say about the game but that doesn't make it bad in my opinion or at least as bad as u make out just a healthy debate my friend I couldn't that your opinion from you if I wanted but it's a good game at the end of the day to me but I have still gone back to other games I will eventually go back and finish it myself I've played a similar amount to you in the game
@GeeEssEff fair enough. And it definitely is no Elder Scrolls. But yea I was just curious about how many hours people expect to get out of their games. Like when I see people saying they played through a game’s campaign once and then never touched it again and see that as a disappointment…. But that is pretty much how I play all games these days as there are so many.
I took a break from Starfield after about 40ish hours to finish off some other games and it’s next for me to go back to.
@GeeEssEff reply for u
@K1LLEGAL exactly how I feel and have done aswell
K1LLEGAL wrote:
Yes and no. It's not designed like other games, it eats up time. You can spend hours in the ship builder alone. BGS games are often played for hundreds of hours unless you mainline it and skip much of the side content.
@GeeEssEff Agree with all you said. I feel it's a good game, just not a great one. Too much repetition and others things holding it back. A shame it's not as good as other BGS games for me too. Still it will be GOTY for some, that's fine, we all like different things.
@K1LLEGAL I played Starfield for the first week, I think about 40 hours, it gets boring after a while. I don't have Starfield on my series x anymore, the game was fun, especially the first 10 hours, not a bad game, but for me personally it just gets boring quickly
@ebony-shabba its not a bad game at all ,its good ,its just not skyrim good ,I feel its a step back in many ways ,if you've played and loved both ,you'll know what I mean by this,it isn't an attack on starfield, after 140hrs or so I'm done with it for now, just give me the mods.
@Mephisto2869 totally agree with you mate it is just good and bad compared to Skyrim it is bad I've also stopped playing for the time being about 60 hours in I'm back playing Elden ring for now but I think the game does get to much hate is not that bad
@K1LLEGAL I am the same. I don’t particularly expect or even want a game to last hundreds of hours usually but Skyrim in particular I have happily played for days on every gen since 360 because the content felt consistently engaging….although nostalgia probs played a part. I’m just not getting that with Starfield and my own unrealistic expectations will take some blame although Bethesda themselves hyped it as a game people will be playing for the next decade.
@ebony-shabba Fair play mate. Apologies I came across as a bit of a D*** in my reply to you I’m sorry. Caught me on a rough day I just sometimes feel on this website the moment you’re slightly critical of anything Xbox people jump on you.
@themightyant It’s a weird phenomena I don’t think I have seen with any other game. Reddit boards (I know can’t be taken too seriously) are filled with people who have put in 40-70 hours and then just hit a wall and concurrent/daily steam numbers have just dropped off a cliff. But I don’t regret playing it and I will definitely drop back into it in the future. Like you said it’s good but unfortunately I was hoping for great.
I was one of those, but ended up refunding my suscription. Looking forward to trying it again with a few more patches and fixes.
@GeeEssEff no worries buddy all is good sorry if I offended you
Not to sound to cynical, but I do think the hype for the game was so high, that many gamers "like myself", just wanted to play it, even if it wasn't their type of genre. I only put around 40 hours into it, but I have other games I just enjoy playing more. It just wasn't for me in the end.
Removed - trolling/baiting
No surprise, praise Todd.
@ebony-shabba if you enjoy it thats all that matters.
@Jenkinss praise Todd 😂 what on earth for ?
For those who say that Starfield bored them clearly didn't even get to the Hunter in the story, because the main story gets pretty wacky and intense from that point on.
@JaffeGaffe you know this is an xbox site right,the majority of people won't even know what youre talking about,isn't star citizen the one where they charge $200 for things that don't exist.
@JaffeGaffe
For near $600 million I sure hope it has something to show. The difference is Starfield is a released and finished product not just a big money sinkhole
@Mephisto2869
You are correct, the most expensive ship they are selling is $1125....
@ZuneTattooGuy good grief ,the biggest long con in gaming history ,and I thought horse armour was bad ha ha
I stuck to factions missions and main missions and it was very good especially internal fps combat.
But like others on here it dies a death after that and also traversing on a plant surface was painful for long distances. It definitely didn’t follow the attention span open world formula for interest per travelled distance.
They should have so added a hover board or buggy to travel on the planets. 🪐
For me, I’ve been subbed to Gamepass for two years waiting for Starfield and I’ll be honest… Cocoon was my game of the month in September instead. Starfield sort of confirms my suspicion that I’m growing apart from the Bethesda concept of games, I suppose. From Morrowind to Skyrim, I felt like they gave us perfect experiences (as messy as they were). Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and now Starfield just haven’t hit like Bethesda games used to for me. Starfield is at turns the best and worst Bethesda title at the same time and I struggled with forming an opinion on it because it’s so wildly all over the place. I hope they reign things back in for Elder Scrolls 6 and go back to developing a single, large scale fleshed out world instead of something that resembles the procedural planets and microworlds we got in Starfield. Hopefully the Xbox presentation today is interesting and continues my interest in subbing for GP and hopefully Jusant is another hit for the service.
I'm sure it did, but how many more subscribers? 10? 100k? 1 million? It's pretty useless information if they don't state how much it increased.
Starfield is a ~2000hs game. We can review it, talk about it, ignore it, hate it, but it will be around for years and it will only keep getting better.
I'm delighted to see that the game increased subs significantly - this was its intended aim and its clearly worked
Its certainly not my game of the year, but its enjoyable enough on GP for all its faults. I'd be a little harsher if I had paid good money for it, but I've got over 100 hours into it now and I'm likely to go back for a bit more before I uninstall - that's a level of engagement I don't get from many games, even if its miles less than previous output from Bethusda.
I subbed GamePass just before StarField came out and I let it run out after Forza Motorsports was out. Sadly both games didn’t really hit it off for me, with Forza being particularly disappointing, but after I gave 30 hours of my time to Starfield, I was able to put a lot of time into Forza Horizons 4 and was a brilliant way for me to get the moneys worth for the 2 months I was subbed in total! That game was fantastic! I would also be interested to see if there was a drop off in GamePass numbers after the release of StarField had died down, because there would generally be the case that people paid the £12.99 for a month and then once it’s all done and dusted, cancelled it like I said for myself.
@Mephisto2869 Hall of fame career, designer of pretty much his own super popular genre of RPGs, now responsible for the most game pass subscriptions added on a single day? An extremely simple person can figure out why he deserves praise.
"😂"
Part of me really likes Starfield, part of me really hates Starfield. It all depends on what bugs are trying to break the whole game at the particular moment. Lies of P was a much better way to "sell" people on Gamepass IMHO
@Jenkinss also talks ***** most of the time ,so there's that too 😏
@Bionic-Spencer yeah a lot of people won't renew,but I doubt ms releasing those figures ,they do this all the time when a new game hits game pass.
@GeeEssEff Played for exactly the same amount of time lol.
I hung on hoping for that bethesda magic that kept me playing Skyrim for a decade and got at least one full Fallout 4 playthrough out of me.
But by the time I’d done the main quest, Ryujin, The uh, Marine guys? I don’t even remember the name. I wound up giving up mid way through the Space Pirate questline, uninstalled and haven’t touched it since.
I’d go so far to say I enjoyed my time with Fallout 76 more.
I was so bored the entire way through. But I didn’t have much else to do so I stuck it out progressing a few hours every day before getting bored and closing it…
The most divisive game I have ever seen. So much hate out there for Xbox/MS. It is a shame. Reviews ranging from 5 to 10 with the ones on the lower end doing it out of spite and already having made their mind up before they played it. Not saying it is a 10 out of 10 but anyone who says it is a 5 is just ridiculous. Anyway, I am enjoying it and will be playing for a long time. Good to see GP subscriptions increase as well as revenue for the MS gaming division.
@cburg the people who didn't like Starfield sure never let people forget that they do not. I have never seen people spam the same comment over and over and over and over, even in unrelated topics. Its been going on for weeks. Some of them are (unsurprisingly) new accounts here and its all they ever post about ad nauseum
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