What did Microsoft want from Starfield? | Opinion
Not that there was ever really much doubt, but we now have the numbers to confirm it: Xbox Series finally has a huge exclusive hit on its hands.
Bethesda's Starfield has topped the US sales charts for September, sliding into the top ten for the year thus far in the process. Everyone knew that Starfield would be a success, but commercial performance on this scale was never a given. Bethesda games generally do well, but are not guaranteed chart-toppers, with their numbers only getting truly impressive when you look at the long tail performance.
It remains to be seen if Starfield will have the kind of long tail seen with some of Bethesda's other games – the comparison that will most likely be trotted out in the coming months and years is Skyrim, though demanding any company to find a way to bottle the lightning that turned Skyrim into an industry phenomenon is a pretty huge ask.
Player response to Starfield has been a little mixed, in the most literal sense; some people love the game, others found it disappointing. (I'm in the latter camp personally, though Bethesda gets the last laugh; Starfield whetted but did not satiate my appetite for their style of RPG gaming, leading me to reactivate my Elder Scrolls Online subscription.)
Still, Bethesda games always evolve after launch as well. It would be unsurprising if the player buzz around Starfield was tipped far further towards the positive in six months or a year's time.
Either way, there's plenty here for Bethesda to celebrate – and for Microsoft too, for whom a great deal was resting on the performance of Starfield. Rather unfairly, the game had come to symbolise much of both the hope and the scepticism around the company's spending spree on publishers and studios,
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