Starfield launched in early access last week, but since its official release worldwide, including a day-one launch on Games Pass, the game has hit record numbers for Bethesda, with over six million players exploring the vast reaches of the cosmos on launch day.

Perhaps more impressively, the game hit a million concurrent players across all platforms, according to Phil Spencer on Twitter / X - proclaiming the achievement to be a "great milestone" for Bethesda.

Starfield exceeded 1 million concurrent players across all platforms today. Thanks to all the players who helped us reach this great milestone and congrats to the @BethesdaStudios https://t.co/5jFaCyPz4G

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) September 7, 2023

It's also worth noting that the six-million figure for the game's official launch day would make it, by the numbers, the most successful launch of any Bethesda RPG to date, even with PlayStation missing out on the action. On the flip side, it's worth noting that the game's inclusion on Xbox Games Pass and Games Pass for PC no doubt contributed to these huge numbers.

Personally, I'd be interested to see how many of these players purchased the game outright, against those who picked it up via Games Pass. That's very unlikely to happen, however, but regardless of the method of acquisition, the figures are still mightly impressive - for context, Skyrim hit 3.5 million copies in 48 hours, essentially half the numbers in twice the time.

Given the theoretical reach of Xbox Games Pass subscribers, you could argue that the concurrent number is relatively low, even if the numbers are beating out every other game launch this season. It'll be fascinating to see how the performance of the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout title stacks up against Starfield's launch numbers, should they also launch on day one Games Pass.

Indeed, Starfield has yet to match the peak concurrent players of Skyrim and even Fallout 4, although it's possible that number could rise in the coming months or even years. In any event, Starfield is a solid game that deserves your attention, so if you haven't had time to play yet, I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's on Games Pass, didn't you know?