XGP has totally ruined Starfield sales

[PC_GAMER2023]

9.1 peak 234K Players
9.6 peak 251K Players
The "24-hour peak" is only increased by 20K at its official Launch. According to PlayTracker it has only 1M+ on steam and xbox for the premium edition. You can imangine how low the sales numbers is for the regular edition. Seems too many people choose to play it on XGP instead of buying it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

But how many people have signed up for Gamepass to play it, and how many of those will get caught up in it and end up spending more than the cost of Starfield over time?

Purely subjective but I have a tendency to buy stuff I play and like on Gamepass in Steam as well, I bet thats more common than you'd imagine.

Steam charts are nice and all, but MS is more concerned with how much money they make in the long run.

 

[ZedClampet]

You can imangine how low the sales numbers is for the regular edition.

I would imagine the sales numbers for the regular edition would be significantly higher than for the premium edition. Also, any sales figures coming out now for Steam are almost certainly wrong.

We'll see what the concurrents are this afternoon and especially tonight. The game is still releasing around the world. Because of Game Pass I don't expect huge concurrent numbers, but they should be decent, and I expect the sales of this game to have a long tail, as they say. Very long. This game will sell well for years, and I'd expect a lot of Game Pass people to eventually move over to Steam for ease of modding since you can't actually get to your game files for Game Pass games.

 

[Slasken]

Some people might have just pirated the game because they got tired waiting for the regular version.

I personally have game pass. Have installed it there, but haven't opened it yet.

 

[Brian Boru]

I wonder how many XBoxes will Starfield put under the Christmas tree this year?

That's likely to be MS's main medium-term goal, since more XBs = more GP and game sales—which is where the profit is.

 

[Zloth]

Looks like it's just short of 270K on Steam today. BG3 has over 100K more. I wonder how many might be planning to play Starfield later?

(Put both the peaks together, double it, and it's still not higher than Counter-Strike's peak.)

 

[Colif]

Microsoft owns both, I am sure they have it all worked out so they don't lose. Both being Bethesda and XBox Game pass.

 

[Pifanjr]

The premium pass for Starfield on Game Pass was the best selling item on the Microsoft store for a bit though.

 

[mjs warlord]

Hey guys your missing something here ... CORPARATE GREED.

I just looked at prices on steam £60 for standard version , £85 for deluxe version and £30 for deluxe upgrade.
Yes i am fortunate to be able to afford it but because of the GREED factor i wont be .
I know that these sorts of games take a long time to make and employ a lot of people but they are not selling their product in a corner shop they are making it available to the whole.

BTW depending on how long you have had your pc do you have a spare 125 gb of storage.

 

[DXCHASE]

Not at all, with phil spencer saying that starfield hit 1 million players concurrently, they def. made their money regardless of how many of those are on gamepass.

It had healthy numbers for steam prior to its release which had roughly 200-300k playing, meaning that there were that many people having spent 100+ on steam alone puts that at what ? 27 million? Even if there was a bunch that got free copies and you didnt count taxes and steams cut, they still made a couple million before it officially released. And this is only on steam, nevermind xbox.

 

[Rolfil]

The way games are "sold" is going to change over time. We've already gone from physical sales* to purely digital sales.

Just like musical streaming took over from digital musical sales services like Game Pass are going to be come more common - especially as sales prices increase.

* A physical console disk that requires a 100gb patch doesn't in my mind count as a physical sale.

 

[neogunhero]

Greed is one thing, players making informed choices for themselves is another. It was hard not playing early access for those 5 days but it gave me the time and info to make my decision to buy it full price on Steam. Plus, I highly doubt I will be done with the game before the expansion comes out, so I can save myself some money by not buying the expensive edition. The $100 version really was greed trying to capitalize on the hype and excitement but in the end you need to think for yourself and for your wallet

 

[Zloth]

Greed? Why greed?? Nobody was forced to buy early. It's not like this is some sort of price gouge for a necessity. If you pay $70, you get the game. If you pay $100, you get the game, the soundtrack, some sort of skin pack, the DLC that's behind door number 2, and you get to play a few days earlier. If you think that extra stuff is worth it, cough up the $30. If not, just get the base game. If you don't think the game is worth $70, don't buy that, either. I'm sure it won't be the first thing you think is interesting but not worth the price.

 

[DXCHASE]

Greed? Why greed?? Nobody was forced to buy early. It's not like this is some sort of price gouge for a necessity. If you pay $70, you get the game. If you pay $100, you get the game, the soundtrack, some sort of skin pack, the DLC that's behind door number 2, and you get to play a few days earlier. If you think that extra stuff is worth it, cough up the $30. If not, just get the base game. If you don't think the game is worth $70, don't buy that, either. I'm sure it won't be the first thing you think is interesting but not worth the price.

Greed comes in when the extra days early is only attached to the 100 dollar edition and not all pre-orders, because the company knows its playing right into its consumers "I GOTTA BE FIRST TO MAKE CONTENT ON YT, TWITCH,KICK ETC" mentality by only making EA available for the most expensive tier when in reality it should just be included with ANY pre-order imo.

Nvm all the micotransactions usually attached to games nowadays and i wont get into the whole 70 dollars for base games because "its more expensive to make" lies either.

 

[Brian Boru]

Greed comes in when the extra days early is only attached to the 100 dollar edition and not all pre-orders

Are you saying they originally promised EA with pre-orders, but then reneged on that promise? If not, then where's the problem? Pre-orderers got what they were supposed to get.

MAKE CONTENT ON YT, TWITCH,KICK ETC

Makes sense to me. If I was the pub or dev, I'd look to get some piece of all the money the social media guys get from my IP.

"its more expensive to make" lies

You think dev and marketing costs have stayed the same or gone down? I can't quickly find definitive figures, but those I see all suggest costs are rising. Do you have credible info to the contrary?

Game dev would be a very rare industry if costs aren't steadily rising. I would base an argument for lower prices around a claim for a larger market, not lower costs—dunno if such argument would hold up, but would surely do better than a cheaper/same costs argument.

micotransactions

Totally agree with you there, MTs are raw manipulation of those who succumb to them.

 

[Zloth]

Greed comes in when the extra days early is only attached to the 100 dollar edition and not all pre-orders, because the company knows its playing right into its consumers "I GOTTA BE FIRST TO MAKE CONTENT ON YT, TWITCH,KICK ETC" mentality by only making EA available for the most expensive tier when in reality it should just be included with ANY pre-order imo.

Gotta be first so they can make more money off their videos - yeah, not getting any sympathy from me there. Besides, I really doubt even half of the people buying the $100 version had that mentality.

Nvm all the micotransactions usually attached to games nowadays and i wont get into the whole 70 dollars for base games because "its more expensive to make" lies either.

The microtransactions I've been seeing in recent years have all been cosmetic. As for $70, that's pretty hard to track down with all these teams of different sizes in different nations. I wouldn't bother, though, because... well, we're talking about companies. Why wouldn't they charge as much as they can?? They've got no obligation to charge as little as possible.

 

[DXCHASE]

Are you saying they originally promised EA with pre-orders, but then reneged on that promise? If not, then where's the problem? Pre-orderers got what they were supposed to get.

The base version pre-orders were not given EA access, you had to either get their version of premium or their version of the deluxe edition to get in early.