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[T4keD0wN]

We do because we saw how the game performed after the first month. The sales dropped hard.

ok, ill bite. How many sales were there the first month and how many were there after? (physical sales from waning once imperial superpowers dont count since they represent only like 0,84% of human population)

I'm sure people who hyped up Starfield as the game of the generation didn't expect Forza Horizon 5 to reach 15 million players faster than Starfield.

Then they were absolute fools. Cars are popular, theres like billions of them, granted Starfield has food and clothes which are even more popular than cars, but they are not the focus, not to mention they both suck in the game so i guess people dont care about that.

Dont mistake me for defending Starfield, quite the opposite, i expected less given its a current gen exclusive unlike forza, the reviews are just ok and a lot of people seem to hate it. Its overachieving given its situation.

 

[reksveks]

I find that unlikely, median playtime maybe, but you will have too many people that played under 10 minutes to get that average.

You can do the maths which the numbers that they have given you

22.23m days
24 hours per day
13m players

Bye.

 

[NonPhixion]

Is there a breakdown of how many of those hours were played in September, October and November?

 

[DForce]

ok, ill bite. How many sales were there the first month and how many were there after? (physical sales from waning once imperial superpowers dont count since they represent only like 0,84% of human population)

We don't have the exact sales numbers. We always look at the charts to see how a game is performing. We know physical sales are low and that's to be expected. But when it drops this quickly from charts that include digital, we know the sales legs are low.

NPD -
September: 1st
October: 14th
November: Out of the top 20

GSD
September: 2nd
October: Out of the top 10

Steam Weekly Charts
Week 1: 1st
Week 2: 1st
Week 3: 3rd
Week 4: 9th
Week 5: 8th
Week 6: 15th
Week 7: 20th
Week 8: 28th
Week 9: 36th
Week 10: 39th

The game clearly didn't put up massive sales numbers.

There's no doubt Game Pass was expected to hurt sales, but people did say it would sell tons of copies.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

Or my dumb ass putting the controller down for long periods of time while the game is still running as a shower, cook, look something up, eat, etc., racking up 80+ hours in single-player story driven games

And I'm sure lots of people do this. I don't have 1400+ hours in RDR2 from "constant playtime."

This is fucking hilarious cause I too am an “idol” gamer. My adult children get on me about this even when they were little kids I would get called out for this shit…..lol sighhhh.
Anyway carry on guys

 

[JohnnyFootball]

None of these numbers. Here are the numbers I care about.

How many actual sales?
How many new Gamepass subscribers due to Starfield (yes there are ways to track this and get a good indicator)?
How many kept those subscriptions longer than a month?

Have you noticed that MS/Xbox hasn't shared ANY of those numbers?

Yeah...talk to me when those numbers get shown.

 

[Atrus]

Like, how do you even say something like this with 250 whole ass hours invested in a game?? Just weird to me. I've never put more than ten hours max in all my time gaming in a game I wasnt enjoying -- if that. Like, when did you suddenly realize that you didnt enjoy the game? Put a clock on it for me... genuine question

Gaming is a hobby and I try to master everything I put money into. I’ve completed some of the most difficult, mind numbing, repetitive challenges for decades and set my own achievements long before such things were accounted for.

Some games have good stories along the way, others compelling gameplay, and some like Starfield offer neither and end up just as a series of obstacles to be removed.

I can’t recall when I decided the game went from ‘Good’ to ‘Mediocre’ but it was likely at the 20-30 hour mark as I intentionally started to spend more time in the various areas like shipbuilding or outpost building.

 

[Rockondevil]

I'm impressed by the hours played though I can understand as it's a Bethesda RPG which takes time. I put a little over double that time so I'm making up for somebody who just placed 5 minutes.

Sense Star Stuff is in the rightful #1 spot.

Absolutely. I used it endlessly. Much like in Oblivion when I wouldn't take off the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (the thieves guild cowl to see through walls).

 

[Nydius]

"40 hours average" isn't that much of a flex when one considers this is by a studio who boasts about hundreds upon hundreds of hours of content. That average means the bulk of the players basically went through the main story line, maybe dabbled with a bit of ship building, then never came back despite people like myself skewing the average on the higher end.

I played the hell out of it that first month but I pretty much haven't touched it since. I probably won't bother again until the first DLC. Compare that to vanilla Skyrim which I was still obsessively playing three months after launch and only stopped playing because I wanted to give Kingdoms of Amalur my full attention.

 

[soulbait]

None of these numbers. Here are the numbers I care about.

How many actual sales?
How many new Gamepass subscribers due to Starfield (yes there are ways to track this and get a good indicator)?
How many kept those subscriptions longer than a month?

Have you noticed that MS/Xbox hasn't shared ANY of those numbers?

Yeah...talk to me when those numbers get shown.

Why do you care about these numbers? Are you a stockholder?

 

[DaGwaphics]

@ Nydius That's basically true of all games with a high player count. This is a good number, certainly higher than most releases.

 

[newtypepilot]

Starfield - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

look at that % gain lol

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Though this stat helps, it's still not the stat everyone wants. What people want to know is the % increase in GP subs around this game's launch. Which is probably impossible to get. What's the sub increase since the beginning of the year?

 

[Loke]

Flawed but good game. Looking forward to whatever story DLC's they release.

 

[Negotiator101]

Honestly it's a great game, if you believed the Gaf nonsense you'd think it was the worst game ever made and sold 10 copies.

 

[Gavon West]

So many players just turning on the game and then never playing it again just to be included in 13 million count...

 

[phant0m]

I find that unlikely, median playtime maybe, but you will have too many people that played under 10 minutes to get that average.

Anyone that played 10 minutes or less didn’t even try to give it a shot. I don’t think you can make a judgment on ANY game in 10 minutes, let alone a Bethsoft RPG.

Honestly it's a great game, if you believed the Gaf nonsense you'd think it was the worst game ever made and sold 10 copies.

Yeah. Its biggest offense was launching in the middle of an absolute banger year. BG3, TOTK, Wonder, CP 2077 2.0/Phantom Liberty ? Never had a chance.

 

[AJUMP23]

I finished the game last week. It has a great ending.

 

[adamsapple]

We don't have the exact sales numbers. We always look at the charts to see how a game is performing. We know physical sales are low and that's to be expected. But when it drops this quickly from charts that include digital, we know the sales legs are low.

NPD -
September: 1st
October: 14th
November: Out of the top 20

GSD
September: 2nd
October: Out of the top 10

Steam Weekly Charts
Week 1: 1st
Week 2: 1st
Week 3: 3rd
Week 4: 9th
Week 5: 8th
Week 6: 15th
Week 7: 20th
Week 8: 28th
Week 9: 36th
Week 10: 39th

The game clearly didn't put up massive sales numbers.

There's no doubt Game Pass was expected to hurt sales, but people did say it would sell tons of copies.

1. Good job turning a thread about in-game metrics into a sales argument.

2. Despite launching on game pass on PC and Xbox, it's the 10th top selling game of the year in the US. I don't see anything in December making waves to shake this up.

 

[Neo_game]

Does anyone know the Steam userbase for this game? Out of 13M if 60% users are from GP ? That would mean approx. 8M users and remaining are from sales.

 

[Zathalus]

Does anyone know the Steam userbase for this game? Out of 13M if 60% users are from GP ? That would mean approx. 8M users and remaining are from sales.

Estimates put it around 1.6 million sold on Steam.

 

[DForce]

1. Good job turning a thread about in-game metrics into a sales argument.

2. Despite launching on game pass on PC and Xbox, it's the 10th top selling game of the year in the US. I don't see anything in December making waves to shake this up.

1. You're going to need better first-month sales to be considered a huge sales success. There's a reason why you disappeared from NPD threads after the first month.

 

[havoc00]

 

[kyussman]

Wow,so many numbers.......this game must be amazing!

 

[gokurho]

Starfield End of the Year Update

As 2023 comes to an end, we look back on what players have been up to in the Settled Systems and forward to what is coming in 2024.

bethesda.net

Greatest Engagement

 

[Roberts]

I believe the 40 hour thing.

Purely anecdotal, but I just looked into the bubble of my gaming friends. Except one, none of them diehard gamers. Three, including me, played for little bit over 100 hours. One has 30 hours and two dropped it after playing for 10 hours or so (liked it but have short attention spans). One tried it out, stopped and will return when he has more time. Then there are two who haven't even installed it yet. Together we average about 59 hours and then number will only grow when DLC comes out.

 

[DenchDeckard]

The greatest achievement of starfield is how much its meer existence and decent performance turns people in knots!

I love it.

 

[DaGwaphics]

1. Good job turning a thread about in-game metrics into a sales argument.

2. Despite launching on game pass on PC and Xbox, it's the 10th top selling game of the year in the US. I don't see anything in December making waves to shake this up.

Exactly. Even if somehow they dropped another spot or two (like you said doesn't seem likely since the big movers of the moment are already above it), that's a damn good result for Xbox and nothing to sneeze at. What was the last non Minecraft game they had with a showing this high on the year-end list?

 

[King Dazzar]

I think we need to be careful in interpreting an average figure. There could be very large playtimes with far less people pushing the average up. What would be more interesting is to see the player count for hour groupings. When you first read the figure you think of 13m players all investing 40hrs. But I wouldn't be surprised if that skews the reality and the figure is driven by a far smaller subset of players.

But hey what I do know. Loads of people play lots of games which I think are objectively mediocre at best. Its a funny ole world.

 

[adamsapple]

Exactly. Even if somehow they dropped another spot or two (like you said doesn't seem likely since the big movers of the moment are already above it), that's a damn good result for Xbox and nothing to sneeze at. What was the last non Mincraft game they had with a showing this high on the year-end list?

It's both a sales success and a subscription success.

Starfield's launch propelled Xbox Game Pass into setting a record for the most subscriptions "added in a single day ever"

Performing like a Bethesda RPG

www.gamesradar.com

There weren't any trials going on when SF launched so these are all full price subs, not the promo ones.

1. You're going to need better first-month sales to be considered a huge sales success

I'm literally showing you NPD numbers. It's above a lot of high profile games on sheer sales alone, even before factoring the sub increases.

 

[DForce]

I'm literally showing you NPD numbers. It's above a lot of high profile games on sheer sales alone, even before factoring the sub increases.

Final Fantasy 16 and Street Fighter 6 didn't put up massive numbers and it wouldn't take a lot to surpass those titles. So if a game like Resident Evil 4 Remake was right behind it and it was stronger in other regions compared to Starfield, then that lets you know how much sales are from the US which has very weak legs.

 

[Tarnished]

Fuck me. 40 hours average playtime is insane for 13 million players.

Yeah, this game flopped...../S

It didn't flop, it just wasn't very good. Bethesda fanboys eat up any old shit that they put out, so it's no surprise that it sold well.

 

[adamsapple]

Why are people struggling to think 40 hours is not believable? 40 hours isn't that insane for a game of this size.

 

[poppabk]

Though this stat helps, it's still not the stat everyone wants. What people want to know is the % increase in GP subs around this game's launch. Which is probably impossible to get. What's the sub increase since the beginning of the year?

That's a pointless stat anyway. Netflix lost subscribers in the month that the latest season of Stranger Things launched. How many people play and how much is the best indicator of how well a game is doing for a subscription service and is the same metric that someone like Netflix uses.

 

[NEbeast]

They're never going to release the actual sales, are they? If they were good they be shouting about it.

 

[King Dazzar]

They're never going to release the actual sales, are they? If they were good they be shouting about it.

I have no doubt it can be spun in either way. For example: If the sales were good. Then in theory Xbox should be telling us its actually bad. Because if all your customers are subscribing to game pass, both Xbox and PC players. Then they shouldn't be buying any first party releases. So ideally Xbox would like no sales at all. lol

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Why do you care about these numbers? Are you a stockholder?

I care because I’m curious. You clearly care otherwise you would have ignored the thread. Why do you care?

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I have no doubt it can be spun in either way. For example: If the sales were good. Then in theory Xbox should be telling us it’s actually bad. Because if all your customers are subscribing to game pass, both Xbox and PC players. Then they shouldn't be buying any first party releases. So ideally Xbox would like no sales at all. lol

It depends on the nature of subscribers. I guarantee MS would rather have an outright purchase than someone who buys a pass for a month.

 

[The Inventor]

Just give us Elder Scrolls already. Still haven't felt the urge to come back to Starfield since...launch

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

“ just wait it gets better “

40 hours just to know that no, it never gets better

 

[JohnnyFootball]

It didn't flop, it just wasn't very good. Bethesda fanboys eat up any old shit that they put out, so it's no surprise that it sold well.

Except it didn’t sell well…unless your definition of well includes not releasing sells figures.

 

[LordBlodgett]

Roughly 12% of the players got to the point of becoming Starborn.

Ehhh, I'm at 170+ hours and am not Starborn yet. I'm not sure using that stat is good for figuring out how many people have put a lot of hours into the game are. Still wondering if I want to go that route since I have to start over fresh. Already made it past endgame, just haven't crossed unity yet.

 

[LordBlodgett]

My point is that "playtime" is a weird and questionable metric, and 40 hours average per player sounds questionable. Look at the Steam achievements. Only 27% joined Ryujin. Only 31% joined the Crimson Fleet. Only 34% joined the Freestar Rangers. These are all basic entry-level quests you reach way before the 40 hour playtime mark.

25% never even reached level 5.

The numbers aint numbering.

170 hours and I haven't started Ryujin or Crimson Fleet quests........Did you just rush through the game or something????

 

[JohnnyFootball]

We don't have the exact sales numbers. We always look at the charts to see how a game is performing. We know physical sales are low and that's to be expected. But when it drops this quickly from charts that include digital, we know the sales legs are low.

NPD -
September: 1st
October: 14th
November: Out of the top 20

GSD
September: 2nd
October: Out of the top 10

Steam Weekly Charts
Week 1: 1st
Week 2: 1st
Week 3: 3rd
Week 4: 9th
Week 5: 8th
Week 6: 15th
Week 7: 20th
Week 8: 28th
Week 9: 36th
Week 10: 39th

The game clearly didn't put up massive sales numbers.

There's no doubt Game Pass was expected to hurt sales, but people did say it would sell tons of copies.

And yes…there ARE metrics that do exist that would be hard to argue.

To me the biggest indicator of Starfield is how few people got the first achievement that literally required you to walk for about 15 minutes and how even fewer got to level 10. Last I recall it was like only 30% of players earned the first achievement, while around 20% made it to level 10. That’s BAD.

 

[Wulfer]

So now it seems the game is not trash like Neogaf told me?

And it will only get better like, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout and other Bethesda titles before it.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I guess it's funny that they purposely used average instead of median to inflate that playtime per player count. This is a commonly used method of manipulating statistical data to make it say what you want.

The best relevant example is net worth (read: wealth) of Americans.

Average American Net Worth by Age: Compare Yours - NerdWallet

The average net worth of American households is $1.06 million. But the median, a more accurate measure, is $192,900. Compare the average net worth by age.

www.nerdwallet.com

You can see the difference. Most people use the median net worth, not the average, because the average is grossly inflated by the immense wealth of the 1%. So using the median gives a better idea of what most people would think of as the "average" wealth of someone in the US.

To apply this to Starfield, consider that one dude who finished Starfield 17 times. His massive playtime will dramatically inflate the average and easily cancel out the 100 other people who tried it for 5 minutes.

 

[poppabk]

I guess it's funny that they purposely used average instead of median to inflate that playtime per player count. This is a commonly used method of manipulating statistical data to make it say what you want.

The best relevant example is net worth (read: wealth) of Americans.

Average American Net Worth by Age: Compare Yours - NerdWallet

The average net worth of American households is $1.06 million. But the median, a more accurate measure, is $192,900. Compare the average net worth by age.

www.nerdwallet.com

You can see the difference. Most people use the median net worth, not the average, because the average is grossly inflated by the immense wealth of the 1%. So using the median gives a better idea of what most people would think of as the "average" wealth of someone in the US.

To apply this to Starfield, consider that one dude who finished Starfield 17 times. His massive playtime will dramatically inflate the average and easily cancel out the 100 other people who tried it for 5 minutes.

Thanks for the excellent math tutorial. Except for one person to offset 100 people who played it for 5 minutes they would have to have played 24 hours a day for half a year. The median and mean will be pretty close for something like play time because the extremes are nothing like the extremes of net wealth.

 

[Punished Miku]

I guess it's funny that they purposely used average instead of median to inflate that playtime per player count. This is a commonly used method of manipulating statistical data to make it say what you want.

The best relevant example is net worth (read: wealth) of Americans.

Average American Net Worth by Age: Compare Yours - NerdWallet

The average net worth of American households is $1.06 million. But the median, a more accurate measure, is $192,900. Compare the average net worth by age.

www.nerdwallet.com

You can see the difference. Most people use the median net worth, not the average, because the average is grossly inflated by the immense wealth of the 1%. So using the median gives a better idea of what most people would think of as the "average" wealth of someone in the US.

To apply this to Starfield, consider that one dude who finished Starfield 17 times. His massive playtime will dramatically inflate the average and easily cancel out the 100 other people who tried it for 5 minutes.

Ive finished it 3x. Playthroughs 2, and 3 only took about 4 hrs each. Its a different mode.

 

[Gavon West]

It didn't flop, it just wasn't very good. Bethesda fanboys eat up any old shit that they put out, so it's no surprise that it sold well.

There seems to be PLENTY more Bethesda gamers than what you have to say.

Why the hate, bruh? You seems excessively salty for some reason. Do you need talk it out?

 

[chessy_08]

That was about the time I figured out the game was boring an stopped playing