Xbox head Phil Spencer has said that he wants Starfield to be Bethesda‘s “most-played” game, after touching on the recent success of several other Xbox-owned studio launches.
Speaking to Axios reporter Stephen Totilo (via VGC), Spencer said “I love the Forza [Horizon] 5 and Halo stats…I love how many people played Psychoanuts 2 vs. Psychonauts 1.”
For context, Forza Horizon 5 achieved the “biggest launch in Xbox history” when it released in November 2021, and by January 2022 there were over 15million players.
Following on, Spencer said “when I look at the teams, when Todd and I talk about Starfield, it’s: “How do we make sure this is the most-played Todd Howard game ever?””
Todd Howard is an executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, and as well as being the game director for Starfield, led development on games like Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 4.
“Quality of the title is number one, no doubt about that… but that will be a success for the individual games,” continued Spencer. “Can we really make these games – can we allow them to reach more players than they’ve ever seen before? And I say that because I believe in the social impact of interactive entertainment.”
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Outside of Starfield, Spencer said he wants “more people to be playing World Of Warcraft in five years that are playing today,” and added that he aims for similar improvements in franchises like Call Of Duty and Candy Crush “because we’ve made it more accessible to more people”.
In other gaming news, a petition for EA to refund Battlefield 2042 across all platforms has passed 50,000 signatures. The petition alleges that “EA’s release of Battlefield 2042 was a mockery of every customer who purchased this video game,” following a rough few opening months for the game.