Surprise, surprise: Starfieldis a hit.

One of the most hyped games of the year from one of the most celebrated studios in gaming reached its official launch day (after a brief early access period for some players) on Wednesday. Predictably, Starfieldseems like a big hit. Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer posted a tweet late Wednesday night claiming that more than 1 million people were playing Starfieldacross all platforms (Xbox, PC, Xbox game streaming) that day.

SEE ALSO:'Baldur's Gate 3' will come to Xbox this year, but with one caveat

Tweet may have been deleted

That's obviously a whole lot of folks, and according to GamesRadar+, a little more than 269,000 of them were on Steam, meaning more than 700,000 of them were on Xbox, game streaming, or Microsoft's official Game Pass client for PC. Speaking of Game Pass, that particular subscription service is probably why Starfielddid so well on opening day.

Mashable Top StoriesStay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news.Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletterBy signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Thanks for signing up!

All it takes is $17/mo to be able to play first-party Xbox games on launch day, so it stands to reason that a lot of those concurrent players didn't even buy the game.

In other words, Microsoft's strategy of looping customers into an affordable subscription service for games seems to have worked this time. Lots of folks who may not have been inclined to drop $60 on Starfieldgot to try it anyway, and who knows? Maybe some of them liked it!

---

Related Stories

---

• Soon, you can stream Xbox games directly to Discord
• The best 'Starfield' traits and background to pick for your new character
• 'Starfield' glitch makes it hilariously easy to get a great spacesuit
• 'Starfield' has everything you could want, except a reason to keep playing
• Nintendo's next-gen console could launch in 2024

Here's hoping all of those people made good choices during character creation and got the best spacesuit in the game right away.

TopicsXbox