Starfield seems to have broken Microsoft’s record for the most people playing an Xbox Game Studios title on the first day of release.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced at the game’s launch on Wednesday that it had more than one million concurrent players across all platforms, though it wasn’t immediately clear the number of individuals who have played Starfield.
This was revealed in a tweet by the official Starfield account, which claimed that the game had been played by over six million individuals by the conclusion of its first official day of availability.
It stated that Starfield has reached 6 million gamers as of this morning, making it the biggest Bethesda game launch ever.
It looks like this also makes it the biggest day-one launch for any Xbox Game Studios title (which includes Bethesda’s releases too), even though Xbox hasn’t officially stated this.
Forza Horizon 5 was the previous major launch; it was made available in November 2021. Spencer stated at the time that the game had “4.5 million players so far across PC, cloud, and console,” adding that it was the “largest launch day for an XGS game.”
Starfield had a daily concurrent user peak of about 250,000 users on Steam, something that hasn’t changed much since the game went into early access last week, indicating that the majority of those players were anxious to get started right away.
The game’s regular release this week will have attracted a large number of new players, including those eager to give it a quick try on Game Pass.
As of this morning, #Starfield has already surpassed 6 million players, making it the biggest Bethesda game launch of all time. pic.twitter.com/4yZa1lAYjW
— Starfield (@StarfieldGame) September 7, 2023
Whether Starfield is going to surpass Forza Horizon 5’s milestone of 10 million players in its first week—which has been described as the “biggest first week in Xbox history”—remains to be seen.
On September 6, Starfield was released for Xbox Series X/S, PC through Windows and Steam, and Game Pass.
The Xbox Series X/S and PC versions of the game currently have Metacritic scores of 86 and 87, respectively. The game has received generally favorable reviews from critics.
