Since it’s a key metric for MS, I compiled every official playercount (last time these were revealed) for games that are on Game Pass and the assumed timeframe (sometimes the numbers may be outdated when they are revealed) to reach these numbers. Don’t think I missed anything ?
Sea of Thieves: 25 million in 43 months (2018 to 2021)
Forza Horizon 4: 24 million in 24 months (2018 to 2020)
Halo Infinite: 20 million in 2 months (2021 to 2022 / Multiplayer is F2P)
Forza Horizon 5: 18 million in less than 3 months (2021 to 2022)
Halo MCC (Game Pass PC + Steam only): 10 million in 16 months (2019 to 2021)
State of Decay 2: 10 million in 39 months (2018 to 2021)
Grounded (Early Access): 10 million in 18 months (2020 to 2022)
Descenders ( Game Pass numbers only ): 4 million in 24 months (2019 to 2021)
Gears 5: 3 million during opening weekend (2019)
Ori and the Will of the Wisps: 2.8 million in 8 months (2020)
Flight Sim ( Game Pass PC + Steam only ): 2 million in 4 months (2020)
Battletoads: 1 million in 2 months (2020)
Rain on Your Parade: 150k in a week (2021)
Games (1st-party or 3rd-party) that benefited from Game Pass (including Day One in some cases) but are on Playstation too:
The Elder Scrolls Online: 20 million in 93 months (2014 to 2022)
Minecraft Dungeons: 15 million in 20 months (2020 to 2022, Day One Game Pass )
Fallout 76: 11 million in 36 months (2018 to 2021) [updated to 12 million, date unknown]
Hellblade: 6.3 million in 48 months (2017 to 2021)
Back 4 Blood: 6 million in 2 weeks (2021, Day One Game Pass )
Rainbow Six Extraction: 5 million in 1 month (2022, Day One Game Pass )
MLB The Show 21: 4 million in 3 months (2021, Day One Game Pass, with 2M copies sold on PS/Xbox so assuming ~2M players through Game Pass)
Outriders: 3.5 million in 1 month (2021, Day One Game Pass )
Scarlet Nexus: 2 million in 9 months (2021 to 2022)
Wasteland 3: 2 million in 15 months (2020 to 2021, Day One Game Pass )
Weird West: 400k players in 2 weeks (2022, Day One Game Pass)
Slighty related:
Minecraft: over 141 million Monthly Active Users in August 2021
F2P on Xbox, PS and PC (unrelated to Game Pass):
Call of Duty Warzone: over 100 million players in 13 months (2020 to 2021)
Mobile:
Call of Duty Mobile: 650 million downloads in 31 months (2019 to 2022)
King games: 250 million Monthly Active Users as of March 31, 2022
Fallout Shelter: 180 million players in 6 years (2015 to 2021)
Heartstone (mobile + PC): 100 million players in ~4.5 years (2014 to 2018)
Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!: 33 million downloads in 2 weeks (2021)
Yeah it’s weird how much pushback Phil Spencer got for saying he wants this to be the most played Bethesda game ever when the numbers in this thread suggest it’s very realistic possibility. I mean, Skyrim had 7 million sales in it’s first week. Starfield doesn’t even have to do as well as Forza Horizon 5 or Halo Infinite to achieve that in player count.
Where’d 2 months come from? Starfield doesn’t have to do 30 million right away, it took several years for Skyrim to hit that number - Starfield just has to beat that number in the next several years. Assuming the game is up to the quality we’d hope, I think it’s a very attainable goal. Sure, it’s a next gen only game (though that’ll be less of a problem as time goes on) and it’s on less consoles and that’s all going to take away from their potential playercount but the game is also gonna be so much more accessible for a wider audience now that it’ll be available on gamepass and through streaming.
I think key stat we would have to know is retention and possibly how it effects retail and digital sales. However massive numbers to have people playing these games
That’s true, but my point being Starfield doesn’t have to beat Skyrim right away - Skyrim has been out for ten years, it doesn’t have to do that in a couple months, if it beats Skyrims total sales in playercount over a decade it’s still the most played Bethesda game. And over that decade the playerbase on Xbox Series S and X is only gonna grow.
Aside from them both only being natively available on Series/PC, they’re also both new IP that have no roots to anything aside from the studios (unlike Halo, Back 4 Blood, etc.).
Oh I just got confused because 30 million is how many copies Skyrim was last reported to have sold so it seemed like you were talking about beating Skyrim. If you were just bringing up 30 million for unrelated reasons fair enough.
I’m pretty sure that even being a new IP, Starfield will destroy every Xbox 1st party game numbers so far, to me it’s a Cyberpunk case, sadly this one had been hyped for a longer time before releasing due to it having gameplay over 2 years before it’s release.
But, even if nowadays most people don’t know what Starfield is, once we see gameplay with starships, crazy brutal ambientation with these space cities etc, the word of mouth advertising will do it’s thing with the “Skyrim in the space” and it’ll get incredibly popular in a matter of a few months.
For Redfall i’d say they need content creators to help advertising, if the game is similar to Borderlands, it’ll be best played on cooperative, and these games must be popular on Twitch to be a huge hit (and must be good of course), if it’s good and they manage to get some hundred thousand viewers on there, it’ll grow quickly.
With streaming being available on consoles now, I’m sure there’ll be a fair few Xbox One owners who haven’t been able to get a Series who’ll at the very least do some dabbling in the game via xCloud, while they wait for a time when they’ll be able to play it natively.
