Doom: The Dark Ages Is id’s Biggest Launch Ever, Outperforming Doom: Eternal By A Wide Mark

Bethesda has made a huge announcement for Doom: The Dark Ages.

They made this announcement on their Bluesky account:

Thank you for making DOOM: The Dark Ages the biggest launch in id’s history – 7x faster to 3 million players than DOOM Eternal.

We can certainly congratulate id, Bethesda, and Microsoft for this achievement, but there’s an additional layer to this success than it appears on the surface.

Doom: The Dark Ages launched last May 15, 2025. As many gamers and games press noticed, it had considerably less SteamDB numbers compared to its recent predecessor, Doom: Eternal. This led to rife speculation that Doom: The Dark Ages underperformed, or possibly sold below expectations.

Of course, as we now know, SteamDB created a misleading picture of Doom: The Dark Ages’ performance. We shouldn’t have taken it as an indication of the game’s performance on multiple platforms at all.

And here’s where we have to look at the finer details. Microsoft has started referring to their games earning players, instead of selling units. That’s because Game Pass has become a large pass of Microsoft Gaming’s business. While Microsoft and Bethesda didn’t say so directly, we can infer that a lot of their players are on Game Pass. If this is the case, it corroborates the belief that Game Pass is a huge benefit for Microsoft, and also for their studios.

There are, of course, other platforms that also need to be taken into consideration. We can still reasonably guess that the lion’s share of Doom: The Dark Ages’ profits was made on PlayStation 5. This is the case by virtue of it being the biggest platform for AAA games in this console generation, at least for now.

On top of that, we can’t disregard the amount of potential players who are coming from Xbox Series X|S, GeForce Now, and Battle.net. While some fans will focus on how there are less players on these platforms, it was the fact that Doom: The Dark Ages is available on as many platforms as possible that enabled it to be as successful as it is.

As Microsoft’s library of high-profile Bethesda, Activision, and Blizzard games continue to pile up, they continue to add value to Xbox, and also to Game Pass. And they also make Microsoft an undeniable third-party publisher, one that Sony, Valve, and even Nintendo can’t ignore. Certainly, if id can bring Doom: The Dark Ages to the Switch 2, they would do that too. We wouldn’t be surprised if they’re only waiting to announce it after the launch.

Overall, this is just another undeniable indication that Microsoft Gaming is having a really strong 2025.