A few hours ago, Bethesda announced on Twitter that Starfield has officially become the company's biggest launch of all time, having already registered more than six million players.
It's yet another indication of the game's strong launch after PlayTracker surmised more than two million units of the $100 Premium Edition had been sold as of September 5th. Then, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed Starfield had registered over one million concurrent players.
Of course, it's a fair bet that a hefty chunk of those six million players have accessed Starfield through the Game Pass subscription service. Still, Microsoft recently took steps to increase its monetization of that business model; firstly, they increased the price, bringing the monthly subscription on consoles from $9.99 to $10.99 and increasing the monthly Game Pass Ultimate price from $14.99 to $16.99. A couple of weeks later, Microsoft also changed the Xbox Live Gold to Game Pass Ultimate conversion rate to be less favorable than it had been since it was first introduced. It's still the cheapest way to stack Game Pass Ultimate subscription time, but it used to be even more convenient.
Only time will tell whether Microsoft's bid to put all its exclusive games on Game Pass as soon as they launch will pay off. Sony, for example, continues to shy away from that model, opting to get the full benefit of retail sales for quite some time before its exclusives are placed on the PlayStation Plus Extra and/or Premium tiers.
It's quite obvious that the availability of Starfield on Game Pass is influencing the Steam concurrent players peak, which is around 270K, whereas The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim peaked at 287K and Fallout 4 at 472K. Still, it's possible a new concurrency record may be reached this weekend, allowing Bethesda's latest game to overcome Skyrim.
Starfield got a warm reception from critics, including our own Francesco De Meo, who rated the game 9 out of 10.
At the start of my journey in Starfield, my experience was admittedly rather dull and boring, but as I collected more Artifacts and got involved in the sprawling sci-fi universe created by Bethesda, I started warming up the game, getting to the point that I have some difficulty putting it down. While Starfield refines more than innovates the typical Bethesda formula, it is undoubtedly one of the best games ever made by the studio and one of the year's finest titles.
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About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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