IF, and that's a BIG if, Starfield is essentially Skyrim in space with a full creation kit, then I can see it easily being the biggest release of the year, maybe even decade.
There is just no way. Skyrim after being released a zillion different times on just about every platform is right around 30 million sales.
To put that into perspective in a decade worth of games... Red Dead Redemption sold 50 million, Breath of the Wild sold 30 million being on just one platform, Animal Crossing sold 41.5 million, The Witcher 3 is around 40 million and I believe Cyberpunk just recently passed 20 million. Diablo 4 was mentioned above... Diablo 3 sold 30 million copies, which is just as many as Skyrim.
Which is to say... Bethesda games have a very hardcore fanbase. I know I really like them. But I am not sure they are going to match up to 50 million sales when Skyrim has only hit 30 and has been their most successful title. This is also not to mention when GTA6 comes out in the next two or three years it is going to absolutely obliterate the sales of pretty much all of the games listed above.
Small addendum... Skyrim sold over 30 Million copies as of 2016. That's not counting Special Edition sales after 2016 (it released in October 2016), Switch (2017), VR (2017-2018), or Anniversary Edition (2021). Now, that might not make it compete with RDR2 (50 Million... while RDR1 was around 23 Million), but it likely puts it into competition with Witcher 3. Right before the release of anniversary edition, Todd Howard said Skyrim had sold "far above" 30 Million copies, but declines to say how much (https://www.windowscentral.com/bethesda-game-studios-single-player-games). Skyrim is a weird case of a game having really long legs beyond release, which gives it comparable sales longevity to games like Minecraft (though definitely NOT on the same scale), GTAV, RDR2, and some live service titles (the same cannot be said for any other Bethesda titles though). I would say Starfield performs more like the Fallout series (just okay in terms of sales) rather than Skyrim, but who knows.
If Larian wants to give BG3 absurd sales legs, cultivating a modding community with easy-to-use tools (and maybe AI-based voice acting) could give it a life beyond initial release. That or free add-ons or DLC.
All of this to say that Skyrim is *potentially* the most successful RPG of all time (though not definitely... don't know how new numbers compare to Witcher... Damn your secrets Todd Howard)
Last edited by Zerubbabel; 26/02/2311:42 PM.
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