‘Starfield’ Rockets Into the Top 10 PC Game Sellers List With Big Preorders | Chart

You don’t need a crystal ball to predict that “Starfield” may end up being the best-selling game of 2023. As evidenced by Steam’s weekly PC revenue chart, the upcoming Bethesda title is already in the top 10 best sellers list at slot No. 9, and it’s made it there purely through the power of preorders. The game doesn’t officially release until Sept. 6.

The whole week is full of surprises for U.S. revenue rankings, so long as we ignore free-to-play title “Counterstrike: Global Offensive” staying in No. 1 for the zillionth week straight. Importantly, “Street Fighter 6” claimed spot No. 2 on the list, otherwise known as first place for a paid game. Retailing for $60, the title clocked over a million players across all platforms within three days of its June 2 launch and remains king of the revenue hill on digital distribution platform Steam, which is no small feat for a fighting game.

Not only does this show the “Street Fighter” brand remains strong, but it illustrates legitimate growth as the sixth installment is lapping “Street Fighter V” in terms of both reception and launch player count, meaning better sales and word of mouth. This is good news for Legendary Entertainment, which picked up the franchise’s film rights in April ahead of a surprise surge in excitement around the brand.

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“Street Fighter 6” owes a large part of its popularity to the fact that it’s newcomer friendly and is luring in folks who’ve never touched a fighting game, tapping into an audience other fighters don’t yet have access to. There’s no telling whether the upcoming “Mortal Kombat 1” has similar tricks up its sleeve.

The third best-seller spot went to Valve’s Steam Deck hardware, which remains a hot commodity in the handheld space for PC gamers who want to take their AAA experiences on the go. Fourth place went to free-to-play sci-fi first-person shooter “Destiny 2,” which will likely remain popular for the indefinite future.

Coming in hot at No. 5 was “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” otherwise known as a shining example of why Microsoft wants to buy Activision so badly and is inviting the FTC to take the company to court over its in-progress acquisition. The Activision-published game has stayed on the best-sellers list for 47 weeks and counting (oscillating between its full $70 tag and sale discount prices) and commands an average of well over 60,000 PC gamers concurrently playing it at any given moment despite the game releasing way back in October.

These sorts of player counts and revenue rankings are for a game with an aggregate PC player reception of “mixed,” going to show the unrivaled brand power of “Call of Duty.” It makes one wonder what Activision could’ve done in the film and TV spaces had it bought Time Warner.

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Weekly Steam revenue spot No. 6 went to “Apex Legends,” EA’s free-to-play battle royale game. Seventh place went to heavyweight “The Elder Scrolls Online,” the MMO set in Bethesda Softworks’ enduringly popular “Elder Scrolls” universe.

No. 8 went to “The Outlast Trials,” an indie horror game that’s held up well against heavy competition from Capcom’s famous “Street Fighter” franchise and the dawn of “Starfield” preorders, especially given the chart’s focus on revenue (“Trials” sells for $30, versus the other titles’ $60 and $70 tags, respectively).

This brings us to spot No. 9, claimed by the $70 upcoming mega blockbuster “Starfield.” Even though it’s due for a September release, it’s already the ninth best-selling game on Steam of the past week, indicating that a long, lucrative preorder period is in store.

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“Starfield” looks to be Bethesda’s next super game, akin to how each installment of “Fallout” and “The Elder Scrolls” is a gaming event of seismic proportions. This particular title is an open-world roleplaying adventure set in space, angling to be the kind of grand-scale immersive adventure only Bethesda can produce. Other titles like “Star Citizen” and “No Man’s Sky” have promised similar things and not quite delivered the goods, so science fiction fans are hopeful Bethesda can thread the needle given its tendency to release complete products. Said products usually have a fair number of bugs and glitches, but that’s the nature of producing games so big and open to player experimentation.

Rounding off the top 10 is “Rainbow Six Siege,” a game that continually persists despite itself. Though fans are routinely divided and often enraged by various changes to the game’s content changes and meta mix-ups, the first-person multiplayer juggernaut keeps on trucking. Retailing for $8 during its current 60% off sale, “Siege” is not only maintaining its spot in the top 10 sellers but also sustaining almost 60,000 concurrent Steam players. This figure doesn’t include those playing exclusively through Ubisoft Connect, which make up a small portion of PC players who choose to buy directly through Ubisoft’s storefront and skip the Steam middleman.

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