On September 6, 2023, Microsoft released Starfield, an action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, on Xbox and Windows. Along with it, the company also made the much-anticipated game available on Xbox Game Pass on the day of the release, which means that people who had a membership to the subscription service didn’t have to pay a single penny to play the game. In spite of that, Starfield turned out to be the highest-selling game in the US last month (September 2023).
What’s interesting is that Starfield wasn’t the only AAA game title launched last month. A couple of other much-anticipated games were also released in September, including Mortal Kombat 1, Payday 3, and NBA 2K24. So, Starfield sold in high numbers even though it faced tough competition. Currently, Starfield is also the seventh best-selling game of 2023 in the country, and it is expected to go even higher on the chart.
There is a longstanding belief that game subscription services, such as Xbox Game Pass, will hurt sales of games. However, the sales of Starfield prove otherwise. This game is also available on Xbox Cloud Gaming, which means that you don’t need a gaming PC or a gaming console to play it. You can play Starfield on any device that supports Xbox Cloud Gaming, such as Samsung TVs, which offer Xbox Cloud Gaming through Gaming Hub.
Call of Duty not coming to Xbox Game Pass till 2024
Recently, Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King (ABK), the company behind some of the most popular games on the market, including Call of Duty and Diablo. As a result, many people have been expecting that Microsoft would make games from ABK available on Xbox Game Pass. Unfortunately, Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer revealed that no ABK game would come to Xbox Game Pass before 2024.
