STALKER 2 flies up the Steam charts as Microsoft Flight Simulator nosedives


What you need to know

  • This week, two of Xbox’s biggest 2024 exclusives launched: STALKER 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. The two games released within 24 hours of one another, but their launches couldn’t be more different.
  • STALKER 2 is off to a roaring start, with over 110,000+ concurrent players and counting on Steam as well as a #1 placement on the platform’s Top Sellers chart. So far, it’s got “Mostly Positive” reviews.
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, meanwhile, is a complete disaster so far, with most players not even able to get into the game or play for long without countless bugs and crashes. It’s also a Top Seller at #5, though it’s quickly accrued a very negative review rating.
  • Notably, both games are available to play on both Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC with Xbox Game Pass, which is Microsoft’s buffet-style gaming subscription service.

This week brought the release of two of Xbox’s biggest 2024 Xbox exclusives within 24 hours of one another, but the contrast between their launches couldn’t be sharper.

One is STALKER 2, the long-awaited, highly anticipated open-world survival shooter from GSC Game World that’s finally out after several years of delays caused by the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m writing this just a few short hours after its launch on Wednesday morning, and its concurrent player count on Steam is already 110,000+ and climbing according to SteamDB data — a very impressive feat for a single player title that’s also available to play through Xbox Game Pass. That number is sure to skyrocket even higher going into this weekend, and it will be interesting to see the heights the shooter can reach.

The other is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which is, as my colleague Ben Wilson puts it in his review, “an unplayable mess after a disastrous and disgraceful launch on Xbox and PC.” The follow-up to Microsoft and Asobo Studio’s hit 2020 sim garnered quite a bit of hype before its release on Tuesday, but quickly nosedived post-launch as players couldn’t (and still can’t) get into the game or play it for long without freezes or crashes. It’s so bad that we didn’t even give it a review score, as “there’s nothing to evaluate.”

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is…not looking good, to say the least. (Image credit: Ben Wilson | Windows Central)

The stark difference between the launch of STALKER 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is apparent in their Steam review scores. The former has achieved a “Mostly Positive” rating so far with 76% of its 2,035 user reviews giving it the blue thumbs up, while the latter has a crimson “Mostly Negative” rating, as only 20% of its 3,645 reviews are positive. And while it’s true that many STALKER 2 players have experienced a variety of performance problems with the sequel, none of them even come close to the ridiculous instability of Flight Simulator.



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