‘Starfield: Shattered Space’ Is Not Doing Great, Data Suggests

I’ve given it a while but I’m going to call it. In addition to low critic (57 Metascore) and audience (5.6) scores, the overall player data for Starfield’s Shattered Space expansion is…not indicating this is a hit.

Even in the somewhat strange Game Pass era where what is a “success” is hard to find, here’s what we know:

• As of now, Shattered Space peaked at 21,792 players on Steam on release day, just 6,000 or so above the high of its previous pre-launch weekend. And that’s in the face of a 330,723 peak at launch just over a year ago.
• In the overall Most Played Xbox Games list, Starfield is #26, not a significant departure from its usual, and even waiting for the list to update for nearly a week, that does not appear to be changing.
• Starfield is the 7th most played game on Console Game Pass and 5th on PC Game Pass, just behind Microsoft Solitaire Collection. Many playing on Game Pass will have already purchased the bundle for the expansion a year ago at launch.
• Starfield is almost in a dead heat with Fallout 4 on Steam, the nine year-old game, despite the expansion coming out this past week.

Microsoft bragged that Starfield had the largest number of players at launch in Bethesda history, with the obvious caveat that it was due to being “free” on Game Pass. But now, if we’re using Shattered Space as a long-term indicator of the game’s health or continued interest in its content, these player stats do not seem great. It’s absolutely true that Starfield is not a “live” game, but with an expansion launch, you would want to see much more movement here. For instance, when Cyberpunk 2077 launched its Phantom Liberty expansion, the game exploded from 32,000 nightly players to 260,000. Nothing even close to that is happening here.

Previously, I speculated about how Shattered Space’s performance might inform Bethesda’s future investment in the series, namely if a large expansion like this happens again. In a normal era, maybe, but Microsoft is breathing down Bethesda’s neck to get Elder Scrolls 6 done and Fallout 5 started and I just don’t think this is some sort “long road of redemption” story here. It may be time to simply move on.

I will not rule out that Microsoft will come up with some sort of data here to spin as a positive, but I’m seeing nothing here that indicates that Shattered Space is getting the numbers it should, which would reflect how poorly it’s being received on the whole. This is simply a miss.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.