Starfield’s success is meant to show how Microsoft can produce big, profitable hits despite the game in question being “free” via Game Pass. Starfield, by itself, generated non-Game Pass sales and more expensive editions tied to early access. A future DLC addition that you had to purchase above and beyond Game Pass. The Game Pass sign-ups themselves. At least some amount of hardware sales. Steam sales, not tied to Game Pass. It’s a wide net, and it would even wider if this was a game that also was selling microtransactions on top of it all, which it is not.
There is a very social media-centric view that Starfield was somehow a miss because it scored lower than past Bethesda mainline games and will not win GOTY like past entries (it may not even be nominated in many circles). But the game has shown impressive playercount numbers, not just at launch, but almost two months later, where it remains a top game on Xbox among a sea of popular multiplayer titles, and on Steam, where it still peaks at 60,000 concurrent players daily. This is a single player game, without ongoing content, without an expansion yet, without official mod support, available on a platform where you can also just as easily get it through PC Game Pass. That’s…impressive.
www.forbes.com
smartest but they done
