Starfield boasts impressive player stats despite being deemed a flop by some
Starfield boasts impressive player stats despite being deemed a flop by some
Bethesda's Starfield seems to have been well-received by the majority of players
Bethesda has shared some player stats for Starfield on X, and there are some impressive numbers to pour over.
The game has attracted 13 million players since it launched on September 6, but the most notable statistic is that the average playtime per player is 40 hours.
For a game that has faced a lot of derision online, that’s an extremely encouraging number for Bethesda and Microsoft to see. To spend 40 hours on any game is a significant chunk of time, so to have that as an average is quite an achievement.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Starfield player stats
😲 Starfield has attracted 13 million players since its launch
🤯 The average playtime per player is 40 hours
🪐 Over 1.9 billion planets have been visited
🔜 More features, content and updates are planned for 2024
Bethesda has also shared its plans for Starfield and is aiming to release a new update every six weeks in the new year. In a post on Reddit, the Bethesda Game Studios account said:
“We’ve been hard at work on many of the issues you’ve posted, and expect an update early next year that will include a large number of “in-progress” quest fixes as well as FSR3 and XeSS. Though we fixed several quest issues from occurring, in-progress quest fixes are much harder to fix and we’ve built a new system to correct those without you having to roll back your save.
“We’re also hard at work on many of [the] new features you asked for, from city maps, to mod support, to all new ways of traveling (stay tuned!). These will be rolling out with a regular cadence of fixes and updates we expect to have roughly every six weeks. If something can be done in a smaller hotfix in between (like the asteroid), and we feel it’s safe, we’ll get one of those out as well. Safe is the key here. We do take a lot of time to test even the smallest change in a game this large and dynamic.”
Was Starfield a success?
Even though Starfield launched on Xbox Game Pass, it’s still managed to crack the top 10 sales chart for the best-selling games in the US. Considering just how many fantastic titles were released this year, that’s a fine accomplishment.
A better question, then, would be “Did Starfield live up to expectations?”. And that’s certainly up for debate. I mused that Starfield was destined to fail before its release due to the sheer amount of pressure Microsoft inadvertently placed on Bethesda’s new IP due to other poor releases like Redfall. And I think that sentiment has arisen not in terms of Starfield’s reviews, but in terms of players’ perceptions.
This is a game that could look and play noticeably differently in a few years, too, as Bethesda continues to refine Starfield’s undeniably impressive foundations. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has already said he hopes Starfield will have a 10-year lifespan like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Whether players stick with Starfield is another thing – it’s bringing in around 14,000 players on average on Steam – but with a DLC expansion on the way and a clear roadmap to fix some of the game’s biggest issues, it might be worth revisiting or playing the game for the first time.