Where to begin; Starfield since officially hitting early access for Premium Edition holders has only shattered records – and more surprisingly seeing these achievements coming from an Xbox game. Not only is the Premium Edition Upgrade tallied at #1 across Xbox Stores in multiple regions, but Steam also counted more than 200,000 users playing during the first 24-hour period ahead of the official release this week.
Not to mention the total counts from PlayTracker surprising many users. In that, it was reported that both Xbox as well as Steam has faced roughly one million players each on Starfield during early access. And by the end of Wednesday, it was confirmed that more than one million concurrent users were already exploring the new Bethesda space epic.
Piling much of the ongoing success for Starfield, game director Todd Howard speaking to BBC News shares it is thanks to Bethesda’s tied identity with Microsoft when releasing exclusively on Xbox.
You know this is the hardware or the thing people are playing on, so the ability to focus on that always yields a better product. You do want people to be able to access it of course. But being with Xbox means there is an ease of access for us and I’m told we’re expecting more people playing this launch than anything we’ve ever done before and that’s despite the success of our previous games.
He added: “I do also think people attach brands to certain games. When you think of Zelda you think of the Switch and I think there are times when that can be a real benefit.” And he is not wrong with the philosophy – similar to Halo with Xbox already or even The Last of Us on PlayStation when it comes to IP/hardware-related sales. This is not the first Howard touted on behalf of Microsoft sharing Xbox Game Pass enables teams to ambitiously experiment with titles.
Elsewhere previously, Double Fine Productions’ founder Tim Schafer also celebrated the company’s attachment to Xbox. In that, he elaborated if not for the acquisition, the game would not be what it is as boss fights would be completely absent. And despite the game being multiplatform, Microsoft is the cause for the game to ship in the state it’s in. You can read the full report by heading here.
Do you follow Howard’s statement?
Source: BBC
