Over the past five days of early access, tens of thousands of TrueAchievements members have been adventuring through the Settled Systems and unlocking Starfield achievements, making it easily the biggest Xbox release this year even though it’s not technically out yet. Starfield has seen huge success in early accessAt the time of writing, 89,000 tracked TA members have unlocked an achievement in Starfield while the RPG has been in early access. If we compare this to two other notable Xbox releases this year that also had early access periods, Hogwarts Legacy saw 53,0000 players that were tracked on TA, whereas Diablo IV saw just 36,000. Of course, there are some caveats here. To get early access to Hogwarts Legacy, you needed to pre-order the Deluxe Edition of the game, which costs £74.99/$79.99, and early access was for just three days. As for Diablo IV, you would have needed to pre-order either the Deluxe Edition for $89.99/£89.99 or the Ultimate Edition for $99.99/£99.99, which included four days of early access. Starfield offers a lower barrier to entry for Xbox Game Pass subscribers with the Deluxe Upgrade, which costs $34.99/£35.99. This could have easily boosted Starfield’s early-access player numbers. For Hogwarts Legacy to reach and slightly surpass Starfield’s early-access player count, we need to wait until three days after launch, when we see 91,000 tracked TA members playing the game. As for Diablo IV, it would take 14 days for the action-RPG to reach 82,000 players. As for other notable releases this year, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (65,000 players), Resident Evil 4 (52,000 players), Dead Space (34,000 players), and Street Fighter 6 (18,000 players) are all yet to match Starfield’s early access player count.When we look at other recent Bethesda and Xbox first-party releases, all of which launched into Xbox Game Pass on the day of their release, it took five days for Redfall to hit 91,000 players, seven days for Deathloop to reach 88,000 players, and Hi-Fi Rush 12 days to see 89,000 players on TA. All of these games launched straight into Xbox Game Pass on their release day (Deathloop did launch previously on PlayStation, and Hi-Fi Rush was an unannounced shadow drop, so maximum potential player numbers are probably less here), so to see Starfield do so well before it’s even left the starting gate is damn impressive. While there is still some time to go until the early access period is up for Starfield, it doesn’t look like Bethesda’s RPG will manage to beat the player numbers we saw for Forza Horizon 5, which also offered five days of early access and a Premium Edition upgrade for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. After five days of early access, we saw 95,000 players on TA. On Forza Horizon 5’s release day, the tracked player count shot up to a ridiculous 220,000 players, which Xbox Game Pass would have definitely played a part in. It’s likely we’ll see a similar, if not greater, increase with Starfield on September 6.It’s worth noting that these figures only count players who are registered on TrueAchievements, so the true numbers will be even higher. Still, it’s a great dataset to extrapolate from, and it all points to a hugely successful launch for Starfield.In this early access period, we’ve seen Starfield beat out Fortnite and Call of Duty to the top spot in our Xbox Game Play Chart, players recreate iconic Halo spaceships, collect a lot of potatoes, and manually fly all the way to Pluto. We’ve also just launched a new Starfield Community Target.
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