Starfield PS5 Sales: 140,000 Copies in First Week Despite Launch Issues

Starfield is estimated to have sold around 140,000 copies on PS5 in its first week, giving Bethesda’s RPG a reasonably solid debut on Sony’s platform despite the criticism and technical issues that followed its launch. The figure comes from market analytics firm Alinea Analytics, so it should be treated as an estimate rather than an official Bethesda sales total.

Even so, the number is still notable in context. Starfield is no longer a new game, and its original 2023 launch was divisive enough that it never really held the kind of momentum Bethesda’s biggest RPGs usually do. Against that backdrop, an estimated 140,000 copies in one week on PS5 alone looks fairly respectable, even if it does not suggest a massive second-wave breakout for the game.

Some of the reporting around Alinea’s estimate has described the performance as a mixed or middling start compared with other recent Xbox-published PS5 releases, but for an older RPG with baggage, it is still a decent showing.

Starfield Still Drew Interest on PS5 Despite a Rough Launch Week

The timing makes that estimate more interesting. Starfield launched on PS5 on April 7, 2026, and Bethesda paired the new platform release with the game’s large Free Lanes update and the Terran Armada story DLC. Bethesda described Free Lanes as the game’s biggest free update yet, built around broader improvements to exploration, customization, combat, and more. In other words, this was meant to feel like more than a simple port drop.

That bigger push did not stop the PS5 version from running into early problems, though. Bethesda acknowledged on April 13 that it was aware of reported PS5 crashing issues, said it had narrowed them down to “a small number of causes,” and added that it was aiming to release a hotfix this week. That response came after several days of complaints from players who said the port was unstable enough to affect the overall launch conversation.

The PS5 Version Also Faced Physical Release Criticism

The crashes were not the only complaint surrounding the PS5 release. The physical edition also drew criticism because it still required a significant content download, which undercut the appeal of buying the game on disc in the first place. That was never likely to become the defining issue of the launch by itself, but combined with the technical complaints it added to the sense that Starfield’s PS5 debut was more uneven than Bethesda probably wanted.

Still, the estimated sales suggest that interest in the game was strong enough to push through at least some of that noise. Starfield’s PS5 launch does not look like a runaway success, but it also does not look like a collapse. For a several-year-old RPG arriving after a messy original reception, 140,000 estimated copies in a week is a decent result, even if Bethesda will need the promised hotfix and continued support to keep that momentum from fading too quickly.