Palworld’s Pokémon pastiche is Xbox Game Pass’ biggest-ever 3rd-party game launch

Enlarge (credit: Pocketpair)

The unexpected success of Palworld continues to be one of the biggest gaming stories of 2024 so far, as developer Pocketpair says the game's sales and Xbox downloads have exceeded 19 million, with 12 million in sales on Steam and 7 million players on Xbox. Microsoft has also announced that the game has been the biggest third-party launch in the Game Pass service's history, as well as the most-played third-party title on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.

These numbers continue a remarkable run for the indie-developed Pokémon-survival-crafting-game pastiche, which sold 5 million copies in its first weekend as a Steam Early Access title and had sold 8 million Steam copies as of a week ago. There are signs that the game's sales are slowing down—it's currently Steam's #2 top-selling game after over a week in the #1 spot. But its active player count on Steam remains several hundred thousand players higher than Counter-Strike 2, the next most-played game on the platform.

Sometimes described (both admiringly and disparagingly) as "Pokémon with guns," Palworld's unexpected success has driven some Internet outrage cycles about the possibility that it may have used AI-generated monster designs and allegations that its designers copied or modified some of the 3D character models from the actual Pokémon series to create some of the game's more familiar-looking monsters.