Yesterday, Xbox head Phil Spencer announced Starfield amassing an impressive 12 million player count since its launch in early September this year. Veteran Bethesda developer Emil Pagliarulo soon reacted on a positive note that he feels “pretty great” about the player numbers.
Pagliarulo, who is Starfield’s lead designer and writer, tweeted,
“I mean, as a game dev, your one true goal is for fans to play and love your game. 12 million fans? Hard not to feel pretty great about that.”
This was soon followed up by Twitter users who were quick to point out that players don’t always equate to fans.
Pagliarulo was graceful enough to accept the reality by saying,
“And yeah, yeah, not all 12 million players are fans.”
Starfield, Bethesda’s space epic, has been certainly a commercial success from the Xbox camp. However, going by any metric, the game has failed to capture the imagination of many players. This is especially apparent in Steam where user review is sitting at “mixed” with a 68% positive rating.
All things considered, it’s fair to say not all players who bought into Starfield’s hype were converted into fans of the game. And the Twitter back-and-forth between Pagliarulo and gamers only proves this point.
