Todd Howard: Over 10 million Skyrim players, average PC playtime 75 hours
During his DICE 2012 keynote speech, Bethesda Games Studios game director and executive producer Todd Howard revealed that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been played by "over ten million people." In December, Bethesda revealed it had shipped ten million units worldwide.
Of the "over ten million" players, Howard says that "many million" are playing the game on PC. Based on Steam statistics Bethesda has seen, "the average playtime is 75 hours," something Howard called "amazing." Our assumption is that there are a number of players worldwide who have yet to power down their machines since the game's November 11, 2011 launch.
The PC version of Skyrim continues to evolve, with the recent release of the Skyrim Creation Kit and its partnership with Valve to become the second featured title -- behind Team Fortress 2 -- in the Steam Workshop, which highlights user-generated content and streams it into games.
"It's something we'd like to see come to consoles one day," Howard said, adding that giving players the ability to "take and change" the game helps to make the experience unique. To Howard, games are the "ultimate combination of art [and] technology" and allowing the players to become their own "director."
