According to the Xbox boss, the goal with Starfield, which launched in September, is to surpass the lifespan of one of Bethesda Game Studios’ previous games.

We mentioned the other day that Phil Spencer was in Brazil to report on the outrageous price hike for the Xbox Series S, but he also gave an interview on the main stage at CCXP where he confirmed the milestone for Starfield, Todd Howard’s latest game: “Starfield was awesome. One of the great things about my job is that I get to play games very early in their development. In fact, I was playing Starfield this time last year, and the game came out in early September of this year, and I could tell when I was playing it, and the fact that I couldn’t stop playing it, that it was probably going to be a pretty special game. You never know when something’s going to be a hit, but it was nice to see how successful it was. In fact, Starfield has now had over 12 million players since launch and is still in our top 10 most played games from our studios, so thank you all for supporting Starfield and making it a huge hit.

A week after its early access launch, the game had 6 million players, 10 million by September 20, and 11 million by the end of October (the latest figure announced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella). Spencer was then asked if Starfield could have the lifespan of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released in 2011 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC, and has since been released for essentially everything:

“That’s our goal. You know, Skyrim is such an amazing hit from Bethesda Game Studios. Talking to Todd Howard and the team, they really wanted to give people who love space and space exploration the same opportunity. We’ve already announced that our next expansion, Shattered Space, is coming. We’ve already told the community that they’re going to get all the mod tools so that they can go out and create their own content in Starfield, which has been so important to Skyrim, so a lot of confidence that Starfield will be very high for many, many years to come,” Spencer added.

Starfield was named Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards, and could win Best RPG at The Game Awards (though we suspect that’s more likely to go to Baldur’s Gate III). Modding tools will be released next year.

Source: WCCFTech