Starfield overtakes Skyrim and Fallout to become Bethesda’s 'biggest game launch of all time'
With more than six million players already
Starfield has set a new record as the most successful game launch for Bethesda yet, overtaking the likes of Skyrim and Fallout with over six million players, according to the developer.
Bethesda announced that Starfield had become the “biggest Bethesda game launch of all time” on The Social Media Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, revealing that more than six million players had picked up the space game since its full release on September 6th (and earlier release five days before on September 1st for those who stumped for the game’s fancy premium editions).
It’s important to note that Bethesda didn’t break down the split between Starfield players on PC and Xbox - the two platforms on which the game is available - nor how many people had bought the game versus those who had played it as part of their Game Pass subscription offering.
On September 7th, Xbox chief Phil Spencer tweeted (X-ed?) that Starfield had passed a million concurrent players across all platforms - in other words, PC and Xbox Series X/S - while SteamDB reports a peak of just over 269,000 people playing at the same time via Steam on Starfield’s release day, September 6th. That number has remained fairly consistent in the short time since, with its 24-hour peak still at around 258,000 at the time of writing.
Starfield marks Bethesda’s debut of a new IP for the first time in over two decades - having focused on its Elder Scrolls games and the Fallout series in recent years, to varied reception among players but inarguable financial success - as well as its first since being acquired by Microsoft in 2021 as part of the ZeniMax Media buyout.
For our part, Alice found the studio’s latest to be “a genuinely impressive space RPG that ultimately loses some of its Bethesda charm in the vast reaches of its galaxy” in our Starfield review. Still, it seems like that probably hasn’t stopped you from playing it already.