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Starfield Has Been Played by 13 Million Players | Average Playtime per Player is 40 Hours

These aren’t really meaningful statistics.

I’ve got over 250 hours and counting in it myself but that’s not an indicator of value, quality of content or an indicator of the active community.

The game’s poor game design effectively wastes hours at a time.

Going Crazy GIF


:messenger_tears_of_joy:

If I put 250hrs into a voluntary activity, gaming in this case, I sure as hell am finding value in it as entertainment.
 

Gambit2483

Member
13 million players...and yet I could see this easily being (one of) Bethesda's worst selling games.

Can't imagine Todd would prefer hours played over dollars made but hey, it's a brave new world over there at Xbox. Engagement is what matters now.
 
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geary

Member
Or my dumb ass putting the controller down for long periods of time while the game is still running as a shower, cook, look something up, eat, etc., racking up 80+ hours in single-player story driven games :pie_roffles:

And I'm sure lots of people do this. I don't have 1400+ hours in RDR2 from "constant playtime."
Thats real engagement
 

Atrus

Gold Member
Going Crazy GIF


:messenger_tears_of_joy:

If I put 250hrs into a voluntary activity, gaming in this case, I sure as hell am finding value in it as entertainment.

Who said there’s no value in completing games? The whole idea of “achievements” is based on completing tasks of no tangible value that are painfully time wasting, annoying and outright frustrating endeavours but people do them anyway.
 
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Tarnished

Member
There seems to be PLENTY more Bethesda gamers than what you have to say.

Why the hate, bruh? You seems excessively salty for some reason. Do you need talk it out?

I'm neither salty nor hating, it's just the truth, the game was a generous 6/10. After all of the hype, it was a massive disappointment.
 

Fess

Member
Funny, there are people I chat with online who have spent over 100 hours on this game but the few people I know in my daily life who've played it gave up after less than 10-15 hours, I've only played about 13. I'll go back at some point but this game just didn't grab me the way BG3 did. I have nearly 100 hours into that.
You simply discovered the real world where people don’t have the same taste in games. Go ask them about their favorite food next. Or music. It’ll blow your mind.

Joking aside, I’ve been playing BG3 the last 2 weeks and while some parts of it is amazing I’m still not having as fun as I’ve had with Starfield, or TOTK. Different type of games.
 
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Hollowpoint5557

A Fucking Idiot
4 people in my household played it for less than 3 minutes each accross our 4 accounts. I have a feeling they aren't counting everyone, rather that they have a threshold such as players who have at least 1 hour playtime average out to 40 hours. Out of 10 people I know who played it, only 1 stuck with it and put in about 60 hours total.

I couldn't handle the frame rate being 30fps which is why I dropped it in about 3 mins.
 
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foamdino

Member
I can believe the numbers here. Anecdotally, I bought this on release for my son, he spent an entire 8 hour day playing before deciding it wasn't Skyrim/Fallout 4 and wasn't as fun as those prior games. He went back to grinding in Path of Exile.

I started up a save and chose to play as a sneaky martial artist (no weapons). Playing this build simply takes longer than opening a door and blasting the bad guys with my space shotgun. I dipped out after 25hours or so - thinking "yeah a 7/10 is fair for Starfield" and restarted Cyberpunk (a much better game in every aspect). Now I'm playing through the back half of the main story and finishing off some of the longer faction quests and my 7/10 has slipped to a 5/10. It's just not a great game, there's no reason to "explore" anything, the quests are awful. Some of the scenery is pretty cool, but the actual quest stories are run here talk to person, fast travel via menu, talk to person, fast travel via menu, talk to person. No real choices (apart from one point where a character will die and you essentially choose from two bad options). I'm probably about 50 hours in now, simply because I want to finish it off and reclaim the disk space before Christmas - not because I'm having fun. Podcast on, grind through the missions, ignoring the awful writing/dialogue.

What a waste of a set of really cool ideas this turned out to be.

Edit: Oh and yeah some of those "hours" of playtime were me tabbing out to choose another podcast and getting distracted checking work email and then spending an hour or so responding, reading twitter, watching youtube, cooking etc with the game on in the background. But for any single player game I play, this will always be the case - that's why I can't play Dota - too many real-life distractions and I'd ruin any match I was in.
 
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FoxMcChief

Gold Member
4 people in my household played it for less than 3 minutes each accross our 4 accounts. I have a feeling they aren't counting everyone, rather that they have a threshold such as players who have at least 1 hour playtime average out to 40 hours. Out of 10 people I know who played it, only 1 stuck with it and put in about 60 hours total.

I couldn't handle the frame rate being 30fps which is why I dropped it in about 3 mins.
That’s ok. I bring the 4 of you up and we average 40+ hours that way.
 

Clintizzle

Lord of Edge.
Here is my attempt to spin this as a negative:

40 hours? That's like 4 hours max if the game was running off a PS5 SSD. Even the new COD game has more than 4 hours in campaign.

I can only cum 40 times in the time the average xbox player spends on Starfield.

Pathetic.
 

fallingdove

Member
I can believe the numbers here. Anecdotally, I bought this on release for my son, he spent an entire 8 hour day playing before deciding it wasn't Skyrim/Fallout 4 and wasn't as fun as those prior games. He went back to grinding in Path of Exile.

I started up a save and chose to play as a sneaky martial artist (no weapons). Playing this build simply takes longer than opening a door and blasting the bad guys with my space shotgun. I dipped out after 25hours or so - thinking "yeah a 7/10 is fair for Starfield" and restarted Cyberpunk (a much better game in every aspect). Now I'm playing through the back half of the main story and finishing off some of the longer faction quests and my 7/10 has slipped to a 5/10. It's just not a great game, there's no reason to "explore" anything, the quests are awful. Some of the scenery is pretty cool, but the actual quest stories are run here talk to person, fast travel via menu, talk to person, fast travel via menu, talk to person. No real choices (apart from one point where a character will die and you essentially choose from two bad options). I'm probably about 50 hours in now, simply because I want to finish it off and reclaim the disk space before Christmas - not because I'm having fun. Podcast on, grind through the missions, ignoring the awful writing/dialogue.

What a waste of a set of really cool ideas this turned out to be.

Edit: Oh and yeah some of those "hours" of playtime were me tabbing out to choose another podcast and getting distracted checking work email and then spending an hour or so responding, reading twitter, watching youtube, cooking etc with the game on in the background. But for any single player game I play, this will always be the case - that's why I can't play Dota - too many real-life distractions and I'd ruin any match I was in.
Agreed. The numbers aren’t outlandish.

I probably logged 6-8 hours with a couple of restarts and four hours of actual progress. Bethesda isn’t performing some deep dive analysis here.

That said, I still think Starfield is one of the most boring, poorest designed games in recent memory so I don’t know that these numbers really tell us anything about the game other than what we already know — lots of people tried it, there is a small percentage that are highly engaged/passionate about it.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Agreed. The numbers aren’t outlandish.

I probably logged 6-8 hours with a couple of restarts and four hours of actual progress. Bethesda isn’t performing some deep dive analysis here.

That said, I still think Starfield is one of the most boring, poorest designed games in recent memory so I don’t know that these numbers really tell us anything about the game other than what we already know — lots of people tried it, there is a small percentage that are highly engaged/passionate about it.
Sure Jan GIF
 

Mephisto40

Member
40 hours average play time is a rather strange way of telling everybody your game isn't interesting enough for the average player to see it through until the end
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Ok genius I hate to bother you when your head is so firmly planted up your ass, but what percentage would you guess are highly engaged/passionate about Starfield? Surely you have more to contribute to a conversation than an overused gif.

https://steamcharts.com/app/1716740 — seems like a small percentage of highly engaged/passionate people to me.
Because steam is only one platform that the game can be played on. Nice try though. You get a cookie for your effort though.
 

fallingdove

Member
Because steam is only one platform that the game can be played on. Nice try though. You get a cookie for your effort though.
Again - great contribution to the thread.

So 10x those numbers. Still a small percentage of the 13 million people that gave the game a try. I’d ask that you offer something substantive in response but you should go to bed before your mom sees that you are still awake.
 

FoxMcChief

Gold Member
Again - great contribution to the thread.

So 10x those numbers. Still a small percentage of the 13 million people that gave the game a try. I’d ask that you offer something substantive in response but you should go to bed before your mom sees that you are still awake.
So you offer only one avenue on which the game can be played, and you jumped to a conclusion. Got it. When you can offer some substantial evidence like Xbox numbers, or PC game pass or Xcloud numbers, then me and my mom will take you seriously. But keep thinking and talking about Starfield. That’s how Phil wins.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
40 hours is nowhere near finishing this thing. Took me 60 or so and I hate rushed through the end. I suppose you could just do the main quest in 40, but I think this number means a huge slice of folks dropped the game before finishing.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Here is my attempt to spin this as a negative:

40 hours? That's like 4 hours max if the game was running off a PS5 SSD. Even the new COD game has more than 4 hours in campaign.

I can only cum 40 times in the time the average xbox player spends on Starfield.

Pathetic.

It’s not about spinning as a negative, it’s about wanting to know data that actually tells you something meaningful vs data that is arranged in a way to just make you believe in something.

There are people here that spent over 420 hours in it. Which in three months means over 4 1/2 hours a day average, which is mind blowing. Now I know I’m using an average there, but the average is for that single person, it’s their play time. Now probably that person didn’t play the game every day, some days it played more than others, maybe left the game on pause like we all do, etc but still that number is valuable in terms of determining how much that person invested on that game.

But using an average to present the false idea that most people will have spent 40 hours in it isn’t credible.

Just like when Death Stranding being played by 16 million people doesn’t tell us how many people actually bought the game, or how much roi it achieved.

Why should we look at data that is presented in a favorable way by marketing teams, just so we go online and spread the good news and prop up a product, when we are an outlier community that actually wants to know how a game is doing, in real terms. It’s why the Insomniac leaks giving us a look into real data, not manipulated data, is driving a lot of honest discussion about AAA development and how Sony actually determines success.
 

Roronoa Zoro

Gold Member
Going Crazy GIF


:messenger_tears_of_joy:

If I put 250hrs into a voluntary activity, gaming in this case, I sure as hell am finding value in it as entertainment.
My most played game this year is Madden. I sure as hell haven't gotten the most entertainment out of it. Just the one I care about least so when I'm not completely gaming and just listening to YouTube I play that
 

DavidGzz

Gold Member
40 hours is nowhere near finishing this thing. Took me 60 or so and I hate rushed through the end. I suppose you could just do the main quest in 40, but I think this number means a huge slice of folks dropped the game before finishing.


Any game that has 8 million(65 hours average) of the 13 million who played it finish it, is HUGE. Especially since many of those people didn't pay full price. I feel less compelled to finish a game when I didn't pay full price so way more than half playing long enough to have finished it is a big deal no matter how hard you and others in here try to spin it as a negative.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
Any game that has 8 million(65 hours average) of the 13 million who played it finish it, is HUGE. Especially since many of those people didn't pay full price. I feel less compelled to finish a game when I didn't pay full price so way more than half playing long enough to have finished it is a big deal no matter how hard you and others in here try to spin it as a negative.

Where are you getting 8 million completed the game? Looks like around 20% are earning the end game achievement.

The engagement metrics are low cause Series failed and it'll have worse sales than Xone.



6 million softwares sales for Xbox is a huge improbability nowadays lol

But not improbable across Xbox and PC combined.
 
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mejin

Member
But not improbable across Xbox and PC combined.

It's a 3rd tier character from Marvel (maybe 2nd at best) plus developer with a history of poor sales for their titles.

Maybe Steam can save it, but who knows. I didn't say it is impossible.

Starfield probably didn't reach 6m sales till now and it's available on Steam.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
It's a 3rd tier character from Marvel (maybe 2nd at best) plus developer with a history of poor sales for their titles.

Guessing that's a comment from another post.

Maybe Steam can save it, but who knows. I didn't say it is impossible.

Starfield probably didn't reach 6m sales till now and it's available on Steam.

Yeah, I preordered it on Steam. I think it can do pretty well in the long haul. A lot is going to depend on community support for mods. Hopefully Microsoft doesn't mess that up with microtransactions.
 

King Dazzar

Member
So you offer only one avenue on which the game can be played, and you jumped to a conclusion. Got it. When you can offer some substantial evidence like Xbox numbers, or PC game pass or Xcloud numbers, then me and my mom will take you seriously. But keep thinking and talking about Starfield. That’s how Phil wins.
It appears to me lots of people are jumping to conclusions based off of an ambiguous average statistic. Averages can by there very nature be driven by smaller extreme subsets.
 

DavidGzz

Gold Member
Where are you getting 8 million completed the game? Looks like around 20% are earning the end game achievement.


I was just going by hours played. He said you need 60 hours to finish it, I was only saying that 8 million of them have an average of 65 hours played so that would be plenty of time to finish it. It's insane that 40 hours average for 13 MILLION players is being spun negatively but it's expected for a MS game. We all know that if this was about a Sony game most posts would be congratulating the dev.
 

King Dazzar

Member
I was just going by hours played. He said you need 60 hours to finish it, I was only saying that 8 million of them have an average of 65 hours played so that would be plenty of time to finish it. It's insane that 40 hours average for 13 MILLION players is being spun negatively but it's expected for a MS game. We all know that if this was about a Sony game most posts would be congratulating the dev.
I dont think so. The game was quite polarising, something echoed well beyond here. I dont see the need for the victim card to be played.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
I was just going by hours played. He said you need 60 hours to finish it, I was only saying that 8 million of them have an average of 65 hours played so that would be plenty of time to finish it. It's insane that 40 hours average for 13 MILLION players is being spun negatively but it's expected for a MS game.

Ah....I follow what you were saying now. Yeah, I don't see that as a negative at all.

We all know that if this was about a Sony game most posts would be congratulating the dev.

And there would be posts spinning negativity as well just from the opposite fanbase.
 

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
It's a 3rd tier character from Marvel (maybe 2nd at best) plus developer with a history of poor sales for their titles.

Maybe Steam can save it, but who knows. I didn't say it is impossible.

Starfield probably didn't reach 6m sales till now and it's available on Steam.
I think its just over 6 million on Steam currently. Pretty sure I saw that stat yesterday.
 

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
Ah....I follow what you were saying now. Yeah, I don't see that as a negative at all.



And there would be posts spinning negativity as well just from the opposite fanbase.
Nah. Not like we've been seeing for Starfield being an Xbox exclusive The negativity and discourse surrounding this game is unprecedented and I'm pretty sure its not all in good faith either. Its not like Bethesda is a new developer without a pedigree or anything.

Perhaps you mean if Starfield was a Playstation exclusive? you're probably right but the degree of praise it would receive would easily drown out the negative.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
When you have millions of players that clearly enjoy a game enough to complete it, yet here we are still arguing about the game.

Clearly millions of those 13 million enjoyed the game enough to sink a serious amount of playtime into it.

Not every game is for everyone. You can think a game is absolute horse shit. It doesn't mean others don't thoroughly enjoy it.

It's fine to tell everyone you think a games horse shit. Just be honest about it.

" I think this game is absolute dog shite and I can't see how anyone could enjoy it, but clearly there's a shed load of people who think the games great"

Simples.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
It appears to me lots of people are jumping to conclusions based off of an ambiguous average statistic. Averages can by there very nature be driven by smaller extreme subsets.
The extremes in the data are limited and the sample size is big so it cannot be skewed too much. The maximum hours anyone could put in is about 2500, and that's if they had the game running 24 hours a day, every day since launch.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
Nah. Not like we've been seeing for Starfield being an Xbox exclusive The negativity and discourse surrounding this game is unprecedented and I'm pretty sure its not all in good faith either. Its not like Bethesda is a new developer without a pedigree or anything.

Perhaps you mean if Starfield was a Playstation exclusive? you're probably right but the degree of praise it would receive would easily drown out the negative.

Right....if Starfield were PlayStation exclusive then we would see the exact same arguments made about the reviews, the loading screens, the empty worlds, the number of hours played, whatever......every single negative argument made would be coming Xbox fans. That's just the reality.

Posts on a forum are not drowned out. And the negative posts are often the loudest of all regardless of how much praise accompany them.
 
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