At this point, you know how important Starfield has become to both Bethesda and Xbox. No matter what you think of the game, it was the biggest title Bethesda ever launched regarding sales and easily the biggest success that Xbox has had in a while, if not ever. Bethesda worked for eight years to make the title and tried to make it something that would blow people’s minds. At first, that seemed to be the case, as it followed some of the “hallmarks” of past Bethesda titles while being set in a new galaxy. But as time went on, people started to “open their eyes” and see what it was and what it wasn’t.
The best way to show this is through the Steam numbers. According to many reports, Starfield has sold best on PC through services like Steam and, at its peak, had about a million concurrent players on the platform and Xbox, according to Tech4Gamers.
However, that site also revealed that once you fast forward to now, the game has under 12K concurrent players on Steam. Why does that matter? Right now, The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim has OVER 12K players.
Yes, that means that Bethesda’s newest title is being beaten by one that’s over a decade old! Some will try to downplay this due to all the “big releases” that have come out since the title’s launch. But here’s why that shouldn’t sway you. First, not all of those big releases came out on PC. Second, given this title’s launch and its six million players across Xbox, PC, and Xbox Game Pass, you’d think that more people would stay around to play it.
Plus, when you remember that you have a literal galaxy to explore, with some reviewers saying they put “hundreds of hours” into the game before making their reviews, there is almost always something to do in the game. So why is there such a dropoff in players that makes an older title eclipse it?
In a word: content. In this case, quality of content. While Starfield does have plenty to do, it’s not always the best stuff to do, and many people have already sworn off the game because of how “boring” it is in their minds. On the other side of things, some people have decided to just focus on certain cities and the main campaign, heavily limiting where they’ll go and explore.
In contrast, Skyrim is a continent full of things to do, and people have proven they want to do those things repeatedly.
