Palworld Shatters Xbox Game Pass Records

Palworld has become the biggest hit of 2024 so far, racking up player count and sales records in the process. The game from developer Pocketpair blew through a million copies sold on Steam in a matter of hours and hasn't hit the brakes yet. In fact, the numbers keep going up at a rate that seems ludicrous, and today, Microsoft revealed that it has already broken the record for the most-played 3rd party game to launch on Xbox Game Pass. When you consider how popular the service has become over the last few years, that's an astounding number of players hoping into Palworld.

Palworld Tops 7 Million Players on Xbox Game Pass

We’re happy to announce that, in its first ten days as part of Xbox Game Preview, Xbox players have made Palworld the biggest 3rd party Game Pass launch in history. https://t.co/yvw2al3jZ9

— Xbox Wire (@XboxWire) January 31, 2024

It's only been 10 days since Palworld was released, and the survival game has already crossed seven million players on Game Pass. That's across Xbox and PC platforms, but is still incredibly impressive. Of course, it's worth noting that this record doesn't include first-party games like Starfield, Halo Infinite, or even Minecraft. The latter probably owns the player count record for the service as a whole given its long-running popularity, but Xbox didn't release that info today.

In response to the announcement, Pocketpair CEO told Xbox Wire, "The response from fans has been tremendous and it's incredible to see the millions of players around the world enjoying Palworld. This is just the beginning for us and Palworld, and the feedback we're gathering while in Game Preview will allow us to continue to improve the experience for Pal Tamers across all platforms." 

This is a huge milestone for Palworld, but the numbers get even better when you consider how well it's also selling on Steam. Today, the game cleared 12 million players on that storefront, meaning the total sales are within spitting distance of 20 million after less than two weeks. Remember, Palworld is still in early access, so that name could continue to grow, especially if Pocketpair takes all the money it's making and uses it to iron out many of the kinks players have experienced in the first week.

What's Next For Palworld?

As mentioned, Palworld is still in the early days of its early access period. To that end, Pocketpair has a laundry list of fixes and additions it plans to make over the coming months. That includes short-term updates for things like bug fixes and loading problems, as well as long-term additions like PvP and raid bosses. 

Pocketpair hasn't given its fans any indication of when they should expect most of that new content, but we'll likely start to hear more in the next few months. After all, the team has a huge player base now. It'll need some time to iron out some of the larger, unanticipated bugs before starting to work on the big additions like raids.

Palworld is available now on Xbox and PC platforms.