The already written off Baldur’s Gate 3 overtakes the massive battleship Starfield

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In June 2023, it looked like Bethesda’s Starfield was headed for massive Game of the Year hype. But a Belgian studio Larian could now put a spanner in the works. Because a month before the release of Starfield, role-playing fans are only talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 and that’s coming tomorrow.

What was that daring maneuver?

  • For many, Baldur’s Gate 3 was a game that was somehow already “over”: The game started in Early Access in 2020. Since then, worldwide interest in Baldur’s Gate 3 has been negligible: Between October 2020 and late June 2023, there was never a phase in which Baldur’s Gate 3 was really relevant.
  • Baldur’s Gate 3 was launched in 2020 in conjunction with the failed Google Stadia platform. Apparently they backed the wrong horse: the role-playing game was supposed to be released on August 31, 2023 for PC and PS5. A bad decision there too, because Starfield would come only 1 week later: Baldur’s Gate 3 threatened to get lost in the hype surrounding the SF epic.
  • On June 29th, the developers Larian brought the release date on the PC forward by 4 weeks to August 3rd and are now a whole month ahead of Starfield. And that decision now looks like a stroke of genius.

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    Since the release was brought forward, Starfield has been overtaken in interest

    What are the implications of this maneuver? If you look at Google Trends, which maps the worldwide search queries and thus the relevance of a video game, you can see an interesting phenomenon:

  • Starfield has a huge swing to the “quasi-E3” in June 2023, when Bethesda hosted a big showcase for Starfield and presented the game in a presentation. After that, however, the attention leveled off again
  • Baldur’s Gate 3, on the other hand, overtook Starfield in global interest and started gaining momentum the moment it announced the “early release”. Interest in Baldur’s Gate 3 has been increasing steadily since mid-June.

    • Hardly any “news beats” have come from Starfield since the big release, while Baldur’s Gate manages to keep the conversation going all the time in an exemplary manner.

    However, even now, just before the release, the top level of Baldur’s Gate 3 is still a bit lower than the interest in Starfield around the big presentation.

    In which countries are Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 most popular?

    Interest in Starfield is greatest in the English-speaking area. In Canada, USA, Australia, UK and New Zealand. The Xbox that Starfield is tailored for is considered a quintessentially “American console.”

    Interest in Baldur’s Gate 3 is huge, especially in Scandinavia: All 4 Scandinavian countries are at the top of search interest, with Canada in 5th place.

    How is it in Germany? In Germany, interest in Baldur’s Gate 3 in relation to Starfield has shot up faster than the global average: Here in Germany, Baldur’s Gate 3 even surpassed Starfield’s top hype before it was released.

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    Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 avoid each other as much as possible

    Does Bethesda have to worry now? No, they don’t have to. Starfield will be a Day 1 Xbox Game Pass game. An expensive Collector’s Edition is also sold for €300, but many regular Microsoft customers will receive Starfield “virtually free” via their Game Pass. Starfield has no real reason to put pressure on Baldur’s Gate 3 now.

    The hot phase, in which Bethesda and Microsoft crank up the hype, will probably only start a few weeks before the release. Currently they are not trying to compete with Baldur’s Gate 3 for the spotlight – especially since the presentation in June was a complete success, Bethesda has many “regular customers” and the Collector’s Edition sold excellently.

    While Baldur’s Gate 3 will likely still have some people hooked on when Starfield launches on September 6th, the games are different enough that there’s room for both, given that Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t arrive on Xbox until 2024, leaving Starfield its most important space.

    It almost seems like a deal between the two games:

    That’s remarkable: the “little” Belgians really managed to capture the interest of the gaming public at exactly the right time.

    Rebooting a game that has been in Early Access for 3 years and seemed “sort of over” and unsexy and overtaking such a hyped game like Starfield is a remarkable achievement.

    Up until a month ago, hardly anyone in the world talked about Baldur’s Gate 3, today it’s ubiquitous:

    More on Baldur’s Gate 3:

    Is Baldur’s Gate 3 worth it for you? The short check before release

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