Palworld propels Xbox to best ever month of console playtime

PocketPair's Palworld – a game that the internet dubbed 'Pokemon with guns' ahead of its early access release in January – has been a huge success for both the developer and Xbox.

Xbox has celebrated a “fast start” to 2024, revealing that January was actually its “biggest month ever on console” in terms of play time.

In an blog post Detailing Xbox's efforts to support independent developers, Microsoft highlighted Palworld as a key reason for this record, and stated Palworld has had more than 10,000,000 players on consoles so far.

Back in January, Microsoft announced Palworld had had the biggest third-party launch in Game Pass' history. Meanwhile, on Steam, Palword saw two million concurrent players recorded, making it only the second game ever to manage this, the other being PUBG.

While for now the game is only available on Xbox and PC, there has been talk of it coming to additional platforms down the line. Earlier this year, Playstation head of indies Shuhei Yoshida suggested it was looking to get Palworld on PlayStation.

But despite this success and demand, Pocketpair plans to remain a small studio, with founder Takuro Mizobe stating he wants to “make multiple small games” and that “big budget triple-A games are not for us.” The exec did state he would be open to considering partnership or acquisition offers, however.

Elsewhere, the studio recently opened applications for a Palworld closed testing program, but it has warned applicants should not expect to use it for “free play or experiencing new content early.”