Microsoft and Bethesda Game Studios’ action role-playing game, Starfield, was the only single-player game to rank among the ten most played titles on Xbox in the year 2023.
According to a report from market researcher Newzoo on the state of the PC and console gaming market in the year 2023, Starfield was ranked among the top ten most played titles on Xbox in the year, based on average Monthly Active Users (MAU).
This is quite an impressive for a single-player game, as there’s less reason for players to return to them upon completion as compared to GAAS titles. The list was otherwise dominated by the usual list of multiplayer live service games, such as GTA Online, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, FIFA, and Call of Duty.
Given the popularity of Bethesda Game Studios’ past titles, however, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It was recently also reported that Starfield is the most played role-playing game of 2023 despite Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 being the most critically acclaimed. This is based on official playtime stats from Bethesda Game Studios and Larian Studios. By the end of the year, players had spent a total of 452,556,984 hours in Baldur’s Gate 3, while a total of 534,823,944 hours were been spent in Starfield.
It’s worth pointing out that the Baldur’s Gate 3’s stats provided were as of December 5, 2023, while those of Starfield were as of December 20, 2023. As such, there is a 15 day differential between the two. That said, it’s also worth bearing in mind that Baldur’s Gate 3 launched out of early access on August 3, 2023, 34 days prior to Starfield’s release on September 6, 2023, which balances things out.
Starfield is a 2023 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series X, and PC. Players join a team of space explorers on a mission to collect mysterious artifacts across various locations in the Milky Way galaxy. The open-world setting contains both fictional and non-fictional planetary systems.
