Our estimates show that the PS5 version of Starfield has generated $7.7M in gross revenue via 140K copies sold. It’s done this in one week. While these would be decent numbers for many ports, it’s not fantastic for a port of the biggest Bethesda RPG in a decade.
It’s also a signal that a 2.5-year delay for these ports to PS5 can seriously limit sales versus going multiplatform at launch (or even six months after).
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s look at some more Alinea estimates.
To put the PS5 launch in perspective, Starfield came to PS5 alongside its most substantial update yet, one that finally allows players to fly between planets manually.
This Free Lanes update was more about revitalising the legacy audience and addressing a huge criticism, though. And Bethesda has succeeded there:
Since Starfield’s PS5 launch and the Free Lanes update on April 7, the Steam version of Starfield also sold an additional 55K copies ($2.3M revenue) at the same $50 price point. This pushed Starfield’s total Steam revenue past the $200M milestone.
Starfield had already moved 3.7M copies on Steam before the PS5 port dropped. And even the Xbox version sold over 1M despite Game Pass cannibalising sales. The Venn diagram of Starfield prospects on Xbox and those subscribed to Game Pass is almost a big fat circle.
Steam had that urgency at launch, though. While Starfield was available on PC via Game Pass, PC gamers would rather pay for their games on Steam than via a subscription outside the Steam ecosystem.
But the point remains: Starfield curiosity and FOMO have mostly fizzled out for most PS5 players 2.5 years later after the game launched elsewhere. But the Bethesda name is having some pull.
Let’s have a look at how well Starfield has sold to some other Xbox-made games released on PS5 in the past six months (minus CoD):
As you can see, Starfield sits somewhere in the middle here, for now. While the cumulative totals for titles like Ninja Gaiden 4 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 are higher than Starfield’s 140K copies, the launch-aligned trajectory is a different story.
In the last six months of Xbox-to-PlayStation ports, Starfield has actually sold the fastest. When we launch-align the data, Starfield’s closest competitor was day-one PS5 launch Ninja Gaiden 4 with almost 100K six days after launch versus Starfield’s 140K.
The delta’s even bigger when we look at The Outer Worlds 2 and Flight Simulator, which stood at 63K and 77K, respectively, at the same stage in their release cycles.
Based on the trajectory of these numbers (and imminent discounts), Starfield will undoubtedly overtake these and keep ticking along over time, sales-wise.
Looking back further than six months, though, other titles from the Xbox portfolio are finding even higher audiences on PlayStation.
We’re currently finalising a comprehensive look at the performance of every Xbox-published game on PlayStation, which we’ll be sharing in the coming weeks. Until then, here’s a peek at a few data points:
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Forza Horizon 5 has reached a staggering 5.7M copies sold on PS5, generating upwards of $320M in gross revenue. This is a phenomenal performance for a legacy port, setting a massive precedent for the future of the Forza franchise. Looking ahead, I can only wonder how much higher the ceiling would’ve been for Forza Horizon 6 if it were coming to PS5 on day one.
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Gears of War: Reloaded has now chainsawed its way through the 1M-copies-sold mark across all platforms. A telling data point is that PS5 accounts for over 70% of that. I have a theory that the remaster was a Trojan horse to prime the PS5 install base for the franchise’s mechanics and lore ahead of Gears of War: E-Day, when that game makes its inevitable multiplatform debut.
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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s PS5 version, which came five months after the Steam and Xbox version, has now outsold the Steam version and is on par with Xbox (in terms of copies sold). About 4M players accessed Indy on Xbox, including many who would have bought the game, though. That makes the total addressable market for premium-game buyers a lot lower on Xbox. Also, a banging single-player adventure like this one is a fit for PlayStation’s many prestige game fans. Just as PlayStation’s Helldivers 2 has been a huge hit among the Xbox audience.
That’s a taste of our upcoming analysis for you, but make sure to hit subscribe below to get the full piece in your inbox when it’s ready.
Back to Starfield.
Our player crossover data for Starfield players on PS5 tells us a lot about Starfield’s early buyers on PS5:
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The Bethesda pedigree was a major driver, with a massive 81% of the new PS5 audience having previously played Fallout 4, while 66% had logged time in Skyrim’s PS4 edition. It’s worth noting that these games are both available on PlayStation Plus’ game catalogue.
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Even more telling here is that 44% of these players had already picked up last year’s Oblivion Remastered, showing a high-intent core fanbase that follows Bethesda’s IP. They also overindex for a lot of these kinds of games, including The Outer Wilds 2 at 17% and even the more niche Atomfall at about
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58% overlap with No Man’s Sky shows that space-faring enthusiasts jumped straight to Starfield. No surprises there. But I’m sure marketing the Free Lanes update, which finally lets Starfield players freely cruise around solar systems, has boosted interest among PlayStation’s No Man’s Sky fans.
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We also see a distinct cohort of premium game buyers. Roughly 30% of Starfield’s PS5 users also own Crimson Desert and Resident Evil Village. This segment of the market isn’t necessarily loyal to a specific genre, but rather to the cultural zeitgeist, buying into whatever major AAA event is currently dominating the platform conversation. I’m part of that group (and my wallet is, sadly).
Our estimates also show that Japanese players showed up for the PS5 release. Around 8% of the PS5 audience is based in Japan, which is higher than usual. While Japan has been moving more into PC gaming in general, just 2% of Starfield’s Steam audience is based there.
For the console audience in Japan, meanwhile, the PS5 launch was their true first viable rodeo with the game. Starfield is yet to make an appearance on the Switch 2. And let’s be honest: Xbox is basically non-existent footprint in Japan, despite some decent efforts over the years on Xbox’s part.
We’ve got to talk about Game Pass before we finish. About 8M people have accessed Starfield via Microsoft’s subscription service.
While Microsoft touted Starfield as a record-breaker for day-one sub additions at the time, the long-term commercial math didn’t really work out for early-2026 Xbox. Former Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines hinted at this tension last year:
‘’I’m involved enough to know I saw what I considered to be some short-sighted decision-making several years ago, and it seems to be bearing out the way I said. Subscriptions have become the new four-letter word, right?, he said.
He was onto something, financially anyway.
All in, Starfield has cleared over $300M in revenue across all platforms. That’s hugely successful in a vacuum (ayy). But – as I mentioned at the top of the article – in the context of a Bethesda budget and a decade-long development cycle, Starfield has likely barely broken even.
Xbox has been gunning for profitability lately. This is at odds with Game Pass’ stagnating subscriber numbers and the subscription model cannibalising premium sales on Xbox consoles.
Honestly, part of Starfield’s lower-than-expected performance is because it did more of the same and didn’t really build on the schools of design brought in by Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring and even other spacefaring games. Players loved these games.
Meanwhile, Steam sentiment analysis of 2,000 Starfield reviews shows that players found many core elements of the game dated and frustrating at launch:
I actually enjoyed my time with Starfield. It delivered another good Bethesda game. That was enough for me, and it might have cut it 10 years ago, but many players have moved on.
On that note, our data suggests Crimson Desert, which builds on some of the more experimental things Breath of the Wild did, is on track to overtake Starfield’s total lifetime copies sold by the end of the year.
Ironically, this wouldn’t be true if Starfield had launched day-and-date on PS5 and had not been on Game Pass on Xbox and PC.
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