Microsoft has revealed that Palworld, the “Pokémon With Guns” survival game from indie developer Pocketpair, had the biggest third-party launch ever on Xbox Game Pass. Thanks to Game Pass, Palworld has been played by more than 7 million players on Xbox, which, when added to the 12 million that have played the game on Steam, puts the total player count at 19 million. That’s a massive feat for any game, let alone an independently developed one.
🎉Total number of players exceeds 19 million🎉
It’s been less than two weeks since #Palworld was released, thank you!
・Steam: 12 million~ copies
・Xbox: 7 million~ playersWe will continue to prioritize fixing bugs!
Thank you for your continued support of #Pocketpair! pic.twitter.com/twgAeYVL07— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) January 31, 2024
Xbox shared these details about Palworld’s Game Pass launch in a new Xbox Wire post, which is also where it revealed Palworld is also the most-played third-party day-one release for Xbox Cloud Gaming (accessible with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription). The peak concurrent player count on Xbox was 3 million, “making it the most-played game on our platforms at that time,” the Xbox Wire post reads. Palworld is available for purchase in Early Access via Steam, and is available on Game Pass for both PC and Xbox in its early access equivalent Game Preview program.
“The response from fans has been tremendous and it’s incredible to see the millions of players around the world enjoying Palworld,” Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe told Xbox Wire. “This is just the beginning for us and Palworld, and the feedback we’re gathering in Game Preview will allow us to continue to improve the experience for Pal Tamers across all platforms.”
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Pocketpair says Palworld will remain available in the Xbox Game Preview program until the team is ready for the full 1.0 release. Xbox says it’s providing support for Xbox versions of the game, including dedicated servers, engineering resource help with GPU and memory optimization, Palworld update efficiency, and general optimization.
Palworld launched earlier this month and quickly took the internet by storm. You can read about its meteoric rise and the conversation surrounding Palworld here.
For more, read the statement The Pokémon Company issued in response to Palworld’s popularity, and then check out Pocketpair’s Palworld early access roadmap. After that, read about how fake copycat versions of Palworld have started popping up on mobile app stores.
Are you playing Palworld on Xbox? Let us know how it plays in the comments below!