After *Starfield* landed on PS5, it ranked only 16th. Does this count as a hit?

To get straight to the point, Starfield’s release on PS5 this time isn’t a flop, but it’s definitely not at the level of completely dominating the scene either. If you were to compare it to dorm-room gaming sessions, it’s more like a new roommate joining the group chat on the first day—everyone takes a look, but it hasn’t reached the level where the whole dorm is collectively obsessed yet.

According to foreign media reports, Starfield officially launched on PlayStation 5 today. It is currently ranked No. 16 on the best-selling chart of the US PS Store, missing the top ten and sitting only slightly above Resident Evil 9: Requiem. This ranking doesn’t look bad, but in the context of a major title’s launch, it really can’t be called particularly explosive.

What’s more interesting is that it has actually been climbing steadily. It was still No. 25 on April 3, rose to No. 21 on April 4, held No. 18 on both April 5 and April 6, and then climbed to No. 16 on April 7. In other words, Starfield is not the type that storms the charts the moment it arrives. It’s more like slowly recovering after midterm week—there’s some staying power, but its burst potential hasn’t really shown itself yet.

The wildest part is that the chart is currently as fiercely competitive as the last chicken drumstick in the cafeteria. Ahead of it, Crimson Desert has rushed up to No. 6, while MLB The Show 26 sits even higher at No. 4, both showing stronger momentum than Starfield. There are also plenty of older games holding their spots through discounts. EA Sports FC26 and NBA 2K26 have already dropped below $20, which puts very direct pressure on new releases—lots of players take one look at their wallets and hesitate immediately.

And free-to-play games are also taking up spots like crazy, which is really the key reason this chart is so hard to break into. Roblox is ranked No. 7, Marvel Rivals No. 10, Apex Legends No. 11, and Rainbow Six Siege No. 15. Although these games are free at their core, they can still climb the best-seller chart through in-game purchases. It’s like you were planning to treat your friends to a proper meal, but everyone ran off to line up at the milk tea shop first.

If you only look at the launch-day ranking, Starfield does seem less than dreamlike. But looking a bit further back, it actually took No. 1 on the PS Store pre-order chart on March 31, and even the $70 Deluxe Edition topped the list. That shows player interest in its first wave was not low at all—it’s just that once it officially went on sale, the number of people actually willing to pay didn’t fully carry that hype forward.

From a market-timing perspective, this isn’t too surprising either. The article points out that new releases launched from Q1 to Q2 are naturally forced to go head-to-head with discounted older games and long-running live-service titles. EA and Take-Two have long occupied spots through sports game promotions, while Rockstar’s GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 also keep showing up on the chart. For newcomers trying to squeeze in, the difficulty is genuinely high.

From a player’s perspective, my advice is pretty straightforward too. If you already wanted to catch up on Starfield, then its arrival on PS5 is definitely good news—at least the platform barrier is gone now. But if you care more about “whether you can play together” and “whether you can mess around with friends,” then it still leans heavily toward a single-player experience. Hype is hype, but it doesn’t have that much of a social vibe. For people like us who regularly call our roommates online at night, it’s better suited to slowly chewing through alone; it’s not the kind of game that will have the whole dorm laughing uncontrollably.

So as for Starfield’s opening on PS5 this time, I’d sum it up in one sentence: it has attention, it’s climbing, but it’s still one breath short of becoming a sales explosion. Whether it can keep pushing forward will depend on how word of mouth develops and whether player discussion stays hot. Otherwise, No. 16 will most likely remain what it is now—a decent result, but not a particularly thrilling one.