Starfield PS5 Sales Estimates Leave Much to Be Desired

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Recent estimates suggest Starfield‘s initial sales on PlayStation 5 weren’t as high as expected.

I’m so excited about Bethesda’s new sci-fi RPG! It just came out last week on April 7th, and before it even launched, it was getting tons of pre-orders on the PlayStation Store – it was even the number one pre-ordered game for a while!

Early numbers suggest the PlayStation port of Starfield hasn’t been a huge success. Alinea Analytics estimates around 140,000 copies have been sold on Sony’s console, which is a fairly low figure, though it’s important to consider some details before drawing conclusions.

For one, Alinea Analytics’ guesstimates have been scrutinised as being hit or miss.

I was really surprised earlier this year when someone claimed Steam was the biggest platform for Resident Evil: Requiem. But it turns out that wasn’t true – official sales numbers from the US actually showed something different!

A source at Bungie has confirmed that the sales forecasts for Marathon were generally accurate.

The company seems to have a good understanding of game sales on all platforms, but it’s not clear how they get that information.

This isn’t supported by the same solid sales figures that companies like Circana provide, which directly measure what’s being purchased in stores.

These predictions should be viewed with some skepticism, even though they can help us understand general sales patterns. Even if the numbers aren’t perfectly accurate, they can still be useful if you’re just looking at how things change over time.

According to the report, Starfield is expected to come to PlayStation 5 after three other games published by Xbox: The Outer Worlds 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and Ninja Gaiden 4.

It’s important to remember this chart shows total sales since a game’s release, but Starfield has only been available for a week, so it’s still early to compare.

Now that Starfield is finally available on PlayStation, over two years after launching on Xbox and PC, it faces tough competition from newer games like The Outer Worlds 2 and Ninja Gaiden 4. Plus, many players don’t strongly associate it with Xbox Studios, given the delay.

While Starfield has sold noticeably more copies than Avowed, the difference is around 90,000 units. It’s also worth noting that Bethesda spent significantly more on marketing for its new game.

These estimates generally seem reasonable, though they suggest Xbox expanding to other platforms could be worrying. Since there’s no official data to disprove them, it’s hard to dismiss these figures entirely.

This is actually a key issue. Since Starfield was immediately available on Game Pass, we don’t have firm data on how many copies were sold.

When it was released, the game quickly became the most popular game on Xbox Series consoles, attracting over 6 million players.

The game surprisingly finished 11th in overall US sales for 2023, which likely means many players tried it through the Game Pass subscription service rather than purchasing it separately.

Starfield initially sold well, but mixed reactions from players ultimately hurt its long-term reputation.

The game didn’t achieve the success Bethesda hoped for, and all the criticism likely discouraged people from buying it on PS5.

We should watch for Bethesda to release their own player counts, as that information could be really helpful. However, even without those numbers, this report will likely be influential, whether its estimates are perfectly correct or not.

Wondering how Starfield would run on PS5? Many players are still hoping for a fix to the game’s performance issues, and you can share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!

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2026-04-15 17:07