‘Starfield’ Is Indeed The Win Xbox Needed With A Million Concurrent Players

After a review period, then early access, then actual launch on Wednesday, Starfield is officially released and officially a hit for Xbox.

Phil Spencer just announced that the game exceeded 1 million concurrent players on launch day across Xbox and Steam. He quote tweeted an “accolades” piece of art that shows off some of the game’s best review scores (hey, I’m in there!). The game currently has an 86 on Metacritic for Xbox and an 87 on PC, at least on par with some big Sony titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man.

Whether this is a “revenue” win for Microsoft remains to be seen. While the game will no doubt sell a lot of Steam copies, a huge portion of those million concurrent players are likely to be existing Xbox Game Pass players who get it for “free” on that service, day one. While some number of new sign-ups are likely to have happened due to Starfield’s release, it’s unclear if Microsoft will release that information, and it hasn’t said anything about Game Pass numbers since January of 2022, when it had 25 million, indicating the pace has slowed since the pandemic.

However, there is no doubt that this is a PR win for Xbox at the very least, proof that all these huge studio purchases are producing results, even if a new, mainline Bethesda game seemed like a lay-up. But after years of production, long delays and being a brand-new IP with crushing expectations, plenty could have gone wrong here. But it didn’t. And not only is the game good, it avoided launching with Cyberpunk-level tech problems, and even a pretty light array of bugs for a Bethesda game. It released in good shape, in other words.

Starfield both is and is not a Game of the Year contender, as well. What I mean by that is that in an absolutely bonkers year for high-quality game releases, as good as it may be, it is unlikely to win “major” GOTY titles like at The Game Awards over things like Tears of the Kingdom or Baldur’s Gate 3. However, I predict this will be many people’s individual Game of the Year, as it’s easy to see just how much this is clicking with some, myself included. I recognize that Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably the “better” game in many ways, but in terms of what I’m enjoying playing more (sorry TTRPGs), that would be Starfield. And I suspect I’m not alone.

Starfield very well may be the defining game of this generation of Xbox. Mainline Halo games are on ice after Halo Infinite was not the blockbuster series re-launch it was supposed to be. We’ll get a new Gears of War, but that won’t be more important than Starfield. How Fable, Avowed and Perfect Dark turn out is anyone’s guess. So yes, for this generation, I think it’s Starfield all the way through, at least until, say, Elder Scrolls VI comes out.

After a scare with the normally good Arkane releasing the disastrous Redfall this year, Starfield is reinforcing the idea that the high-quality studios that Xbox has paid billions for are producing things worth that kind of cash. I maintain that I’m not sure how games with sprawling budgets like this make sense for Game Pass indefinitely, but Microsoft seems to maintain that it’s fine. And it certainly is a huge benefit to players. More to come on all this as the launch window continues.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.