Palworld Player Counts on Xbox Shortly Surpassed Fortnite

It seems that the Palworld hype on Xbox is just as big as it is on PC. At this point in time, developer Pocketpair has confirmed that Palworld has sold over 7 million copies on Steam alone, which is a baffling feat that has resulted in the survival game skyrocketing up the PC platform's concurrent player charts. While Palworld has been a big success on PC, though, questions have lingered about just how big it has also been across Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One. Now, thanks to new info that has emerged, we've learned that Palworld is somehow even bigger than imagined. 

According to data provided by Circana's Mat Piscatella, the number of active users for Palworld on January 22 ended up topping Fortnite. Piscatella notes that this achievement only happened for a single day and added that "it was close" when comparing metrics between Palworld and Fortnite. Still, Palworld users on Xbox on this day ended up playing the game for an average of over 200 minutes, which is absolutely staggering. 

According to Circana's Player Engagement Tracker, on January 22nd Palworld surpassed Fortnite in US XBS DAU. On that day alone, Palworld players on XBS in the US played Palworld for more than 200 minutes, on average. Bonkers numbers.

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 24, 2024

By far the most impressive part of this feat for Palworld is that, unlike Fortnite, the game costs money to play. Fortnite is completely free to download and experience but Palworld is currently in beta on Xbox and retails for $29.99. The caveat with this, though, is that Palworld is available at no cost for those who are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass. As such, there's no doubt that Game Pass is giving Palworld a substantial boost on Xbox and may even be a selling point for many to subscribe to the service in the first place. 

Even though it hasn't been out for a full week, it seems clear that Palworld is going to be a pillar of the live-service video game scene for a long, long time. Moving forward, Pocketpair is going to begin working towards reaching the 1.0 version of Palworld and will add PvP, crossplay between consoles and PC, and more Pals to catch. Those at PlayStation have also expressed an early interest in bringing Palworld to PS5 and PS4, but no such plans for this release have been currently announced.