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Bethesda Expected To Make $1 Billion On Starfield
- Thread starter Bernoulli
- Start date
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graywolf323
Member
you really really should have the mods update your username… you’re an evangelist alright but it hasn’t been for Sega in a long time
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
IntentionalPun
Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Especially since this report is before they got bought by Microsoft.
When the game would have been on Xbox, PC and Playstation, and not day 1 on a subscription service.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
No, neither of you is being realistic. Game Pass won't make Starfield drop to 1/4th of what it was supposed to earn even accounting for the loss Playstation userbase. The game would need to sell around 16M units at full price to reach that figure over 4 years. Fallout 4 shipped 12M in 24 hours. Starfield can absolutely sell 20M over the next 4 years, even considering the Game Pass impact.
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Gavon West
Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
The early access was $100 and they sold 1+ million in, like 48 hrs if I'm not mistaken on Steam alone.
Gavon West
Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
Oh, that's right. The subscription service is "free". My bad.. Carry on.Not when a game launches on a subscription service.
M1chl
Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Yeah that was like 35 bucks, I believe I payed 900CZK which is ~39USD
That's literally what makes the thread interesting.
But anyway, I can' be the only one who has wondered about your tag over the years? So spill the beans!
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Who said it is free?
Subscription service players do NOT equate to game sales though.
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
No "genius" it doesn't. It would IF Starfield was the only game on Gamepass, but it isn't.
I am a subscriber, but I have a subscription, because I took advantage of the conversion from years ago. Mine ends in 2025. I doubt I will renew and will just go back to buying games the normal way.
Slicker than your average
Banned
Whoever wrote that piece can't count. Embarrassing.
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
SEGA will always be number one, but I naturally became an Xbox fan due to Shenmue 2, Jet Set Radio Future, and Panzer Dragon Orta being on Xbox. It's probably not worth responding to idiotic posts like yours, though, as I haven't written anything crazy in this thread.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Yeah, so nothing but a troll post. Game Pass will destroy the sales so badly it won't even hit 1/4th of Fallout 4's numbers.enjoy your upcoming smash hits on gamepass
Please explain how Bethesda would use Game Pass revenue for this estimate....
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Even then $11 p/m does not equate to $70 game sale.
To achieve similar revenue, they'd have had to recompensate 1 game sale around launch with more than 6 Game Pass subscriptions.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
This assumes Starfield doesn't drop in price, which is a ridiculous assumption.
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
Sales don’t really matter to me, I don’t really care about how much money a faceless corporate entity makes. I care about the rolling product being of high quality and providing me with a lot of entertainment for my money. If you’re getting that from gamepass I’m sincerely happy for you. I don’t believe this model is sustainable however, only for Xbox, being funded by the profits of a separate technology umbrella.
Read the leaks about MS’s lead software architect basically warning about this. Xbox is being left to run riot but I believe eventually someone is going to cut them off unless they actually start to make some sort of foothold. Nintendo and Sony are crushing them using the old fashioned method of making good games and hardware.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
In Starfield's case it would it would need the $16 p/m since it isn't part of the $11 tier.
On another note, Gamepass Core at $60 a year is actually pretty reasonable.
NonPhixion
Member
I wonder how much revenue they will get from the 7000 reward points I used for one month of PC Gamepass? Hmmmm 
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
yes, I have said the same thing. People loved the goodies being provided by Gamepass, but ultimately it needs to make money in the long run. I don't believe MS will ever have a prayers chance of catching the quality of Nintendo and Sony as long as thet continue to employ people like Spencer, Booty and Greenberg.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
No, it would make $1.4B if it didn't drop in price. The $400M less is assuming price drops over the course of the next few years.
Which is cool but has nothing to do with the thread. Starfield without Game Pass and with Playstation would probably be already close to $1B by now, just like Fallout 4. Because of the loss of PS users and the Game Pass Impact, we're stretching what could have happened in like 2-3 months to 4 years. How is this unrealistic?
Negotiator101
Member
You're afraid alright, no doubt about it.
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
GHG
Member
Oh so now people want to state it was going to be multiplatform?
Sorry, silly me, there was me thinking that it was never going to release anywhere other than where it has due to them not announcing specific platforms for the game prior to the acquisition.
Who knows, maybe these projections were only for Xbox/PC afterall? Hell, it might have been slated to be PC only without Microsoft's intervention.
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SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
PC sales and long-tail sales from discounts, yeah eventually it could hit $1 billion. I think losing a PS SKU makes this harder to accomplish, given how huge the PS5 install base is vs Xbox current-gen.
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GHG
Member
We will never know, personally I wouldn't be so quick to make assumptions.
Let us remember that if not for Microsoft there was no guarantee it was going to even ever land on Xbox consoles.
FearlessBelgian
Member
This is absolutely impossible with Gamepass, which takes 80% of potential sales...
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
Phil Spencer pretty much said one of the reasons they acquired Bethesda was because Sony would pay for games like Starfield to not come to Xbox. I get that. But when you are making an evaluation to make a bid for Bethesda, the number would likely come from multiplatform sales. That's why I find the laughing in here to be pretty ridiculous. It's an extremely sensible projection.
We will never know, personally I wouldn't be so quick to make assumptions.
Let us remember that if not for Microsoft there was no guarantee it was going to even ever land on Xbox consoles.
GHG
Member
Praise Phil for saving the game then and giving it every chance of achieving what Bethesda initially projected.
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
Well they got purchased by Microsoft for $7.5 billion, and maybe $1 billion was just for Starfield.
So in a way, you can say they already got their mon--
Nice to see you also have a sense of humor about it.
And basically beat me to my own joke :/
So they really fear Rockstar? Makes sense.
So in a way, you can say they already got their mon--
Nice to see you also have a sense of humor about it.
And basically beat me to my own joke :/
the final step.......................re-release starfield again and again
So they really fear Rockstar? Makes sense.
GHG
Member
You've talked about this idea that Sony were about to make it exclusive before Phil stepped in, surely if that were to be the case then they would have factored it into their projections?
Not sure why that's something you're willing to bring up but not factor in?
arkhamguy123
Member
Lol when in 2028?
We have enough real world data to extrapolate that it didn’t do so hot on a sales basis. Steam and the UK sales charts are pretty unambiguously clear.
It did so mediocre they had to announce it by how many people have played it. Which is classic Microsoft cope. Need I remind people of when halo infinite was the biggest halo launch of all time due to “amount of players”. Now this is the “”biggest bethesda launch of all time”” cmon. Fool me once.
We have enough real world data to extrapolate that it didn’t do so hot on a sales basis. Steam and the UK sales charts are pretty unambiguously clear.
It did so mediocre they had to announce it by how many people have played it. Which is classic Microsoft cope. Need I remind people of when halo infinite was the biggest halo launch of all time due to “amount of players”. Now this is the “”biggest bethesda launch of all time”” cmon. Fool me once.
SEGAvangelist
Gold Member
You implied that I wrote that the game would not be released without Phil. Like he's saving it from being cancelled or something. And why would they factor in a possible Sony timed exclusive release when making a company evaluation? Bethesda would laugh at them for presenting a number with that in mind.
Trogdor1123
Gold Member
How much did it do on each platform?
GHG
Member
No, I'm just going off what we've been told multiple times here over the last 12 months or so, hence the post I linked.
If you want to assert that Sony were angling to make the game exclusive to their platform (which by the way, only has the flimsy "evidence" of Phil Spencer's words backing that up) and talks were as advanced and as concrete as we were led to believe by him then it's something Bethesda would have certainly factored in.
Therefore, these numbers should be very much attainable for Xbox/PC alone regardless, there needn't be any excuses.
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ByWatterson
Member
They made $7 billion, really.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
It's not just skipping PS systems that make it almost impossible; highly likely the game will skip Nintendo systems, too.
At first I thought the game could do 14 or so million lifetime between Xbox & PC (not necessarily $1 billion in sales that way, just units moved), but that was assuming much stronger reception. At best reception towards the game is "It's decent-to-good, but nothing special". Even in the context of other big games released this year, it falls very flat compared to say Hogwarts or TOTK, or Baldur's Gate 3, and I think it'll fall flat to Spiderman 2 as well plus Super Mario Bros. Wonder and the Super Mario RPG remake.
So sales will probably start slowing down a lot if they haven't already. They can maybe still reach 14 million lifetime (mostly on PC) but it'll really come down to how long DLC comes out, how good it is, and how good the mod community's support for the game is. But $1 billion? Yeah that isn't happening without porting it to Sony and/or Nintendo platforms.
Unless Microsoft wants to start breaking down Game Pass subscriber & revenue uptick on a per-game basis. Which I don't think they will ever do, because once they start, everyone (gamers, shareholders, investors, analysts etc.) will expect them to keep with that transparency, or take lack of it as admittance of model failure.
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Mr Moose
Member
Phil is a lying asshole. It was Bethesda shopping around for timed exclusive deals.