REPORT: Starfield Has Only Sold 140K Copies On PS5...

TL;DR

Starfield sold only 140,000 copies on PS5 in its first week, suggesting Xbox's timed exclusivity strategy severely damaged the game's commercial potential.

Key Points

• 1.Starfield sold just 140,000 PS5 copies in its first week. Figures come from the Alenia Insight newsletter, the same source that accurately reported Marathon's 1.2M cross-platform sales, confirmed by Bungie insiders.
• 2.The 2.5-year exclusivity delay is blamed for killing PS5 sales. By launching only on Xbox in 2023, hype died before the April 7, 2025 PS5 release, worsened by the game's mixed critical reception.
• 3.Starfield has barely broken even despite $300M+ in total revenue. With ~3.7M Steam copies sold pre-PS5 launch and roughly $200M in Steam revenue alone, the game's massive multi-year development budget left little to no profit.
• 4.The Shattered Space DLC and free Lanes update failed to spark a meaningful revival. Steam saw only ~55,000 new copies sold in the launch week ($2.3M revenue), and current player counts remain below older titles like Skyrim.
• 5.Crimson Desert is projected to outsell Starfield's lifetime copies within 9 months. The Alenia Insight newsletter concludes that a simultaneous PS5 launch without Game Pass availability could have dramatically changed the game's financial outcome, and Bethesda is now banking on Elder Scrolls 6 to recover.