Age of Empires 4 charging up Steam's current players chart

Age of Empires 4 is off to a flyer on Steam.

At the time of this article's publication, Microsoft's real-time strategy game had 64,550 concurrent players on Steam - with the number growing slowly but steadily throughout the day. That's more concurrent players than Destiny 2, Warframe and Civilization 6.

That figure is also way ahead of the series' best ever current players figure of 38,725, set by Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition nine months ago (thanks, SteamDB).

For extra context, Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition managed an all-time peak current players number of 20,146 13 months ago.

The impressive Steam numbers for Age of Empires 4 don't tell the whole story, either. As an Xbox Game Studios title, Age of Empires 4 came out day-and-date on Game Pass for PC. I imagine it has loads of players there - last night I spent a quid to play Age of Empires 4 for a month via Xbox Game Pass Ultimate's introductory offer. It really does seem too good to be true, doesn't it?

Crazy I can play Age of Empires 4 for a month for a quid pic.twitter.com/KlpMy43aie

However the money works for Microsoft (and let's remember Age of Empires 4 costs £50 on Steam), the company must be delighted with the number of players it's pulled in for Age of Empires 4's launch. RTS is hardly the hottest of video game genres, so as a fan of real-time strategy I was hoping Age of Empires 4 would help convince other game companies to look again at their IP (hey, EA - Command & Conquer is ready and waiting!).