Summary
Stellar Blade’sfull release is just a couple of weeks away, and I think it’s accurate to say that developer Shift Up has done a pretty tremendous job in showing off the game’s qualities with the launch of its free demo last month. Not only has it given people the chance to test out whether Stellar Blade is the game for them, but it’s also given those who are picking the game up some practice before launch, with somespending over 50 hours in the demo alone.
In fact, Shift Up has done such a good job marketing Stellar Blade before release that the peak player count for the demo is blowing other high-profile demos out of the water. According to data fromAmpere Analysis(thanksGame World Observer), the Stellar Blade demo’s daily active users managed to peak at a whopping 690,000 players, which is almost double the number thatFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirth’sdemo managed to peak at.
Being the last demo released for a PS5 exclusive, the impressive performance of Stellar Blade’s demo was compared with the performance of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s, which managed a peak daily active user count of 380,000. That’s nothing to sniff at for a demo, but Stellar Blade almost doubling it, despite not being a highly-anticipated sequel, is extremely impressive.
Can Shift Up Carry That Success Into Stellar Blade’s Full Release
Ampere Analysis also goes on to explain that Square Enix managed to increase that daily active player peak by 251 percent upon the launch of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, racking up roughly 2.21 million players at its highest. If Stellar Blade matches that, it’s projected to have a daily active player peak of a little over 4 million, which would be extremely impressive for a new IP exclusive to PlayStation 5.
However, Ampere Analysis doesn’t actually believe that Stellar Blade will match that growth rate, as Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth had the benefit of being part of an established IP. There’s also the possibility that players may have been deliberately avoiding the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo to go in fresh, what with it being heavily story-focused, whereas Stellar Blade has more of a focus on challenging gameplay.
In any case, a peak daily active user count of 690,000 is very impressive for a demo, and if Stellar Blade can even slightly improve on those numbers, I’m sure Shift Up and PlayStation will regard it as a success. We already know it’sthe most pre-ordered title on the PlayStation storefrontin multiple different regions, so we can safely assume that the April 26 launch day is going to be a big one for Shift Up.
