By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
shikamaru317 on 07 September 2023
Edit Thread
gtotheunit91 said:
crissindahouse said:

Yeah, Starfield numbers on Steam are "much" lower as I expected but on the other hand games like this were supposed to push Gamepass (otherwise it wouldn't make sense to release hundred million dollar games there). So, if it pushed Gamepass subscriptions by a big number than those Steam numbers are absolutely ok. If it didn't then the Steam numbers are a little bit disappointing even if still big obviously.

Yeah it places Starfield at #34 on the all-time list nowhere near Fallout 4, so it'd be interesting to see the number disparity between PC and console Game Pass. Sure the Xbox app is still a subpar experience, but it has drastically improved and it may be a huge number that were wanting to play Starfield for only $10.

PlayTracker still estimates that Starfield owners are over 1 million, so it may a combination of those who were able to play in early access because it was the weekend against those that weren't able to play yet because it was the middle of the work week. So it'll be interesting to see what concurrent player numbers will look like this weekend. 

Here is my rough estimation of how to break down the 1m+ peak concurrent users across all platforms:

  • Steam- 269k (roughly 25%)
  • Windows Store/PC Gamepass- Roughly 36%
  • Xbox/Console Gamepass- Roughly 38%
  • Cloud- Roughly 1%

Why are those my estimations? Well we know that PC overall is the biggest playerbase for Bethesda games, the biggest by a pretty big margin, so therefore PC (Steam + Windows Store/PC Gamepass combined) has to be the largest platform for Starfield. We know that PC is the biggest platform for Bethesda games because we have pretty good data for their past games. For instance, we know that approximately 40% of Skyrim's 60m+ lifetime owners are on PC, with the other ~60% being split between 3 different Xbox consoles (360, XB1, XS) and 3 different PS console (PS3, PS4, PS5)

As for cloud, well, Xbox revealed in the court case that they only have the server capacity for 5k peak concurrent players in the UK, and the UK is their 2nd largest gaming market. Worldwide then, they likely only have the server capacity for maybe 30k or so people to use Cloud gaming at once, and those would be split across all games, not just Starfield, so 10k peak concurrent people playing Starfield on Cloud, or 1% of the 1m peak concurrent players across all platforms, sounds about right to me.

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 07 September 2023