Palworld, playfully dubbed as "Pokémon with guns" on account of its similar-looking monster designs, has experienced a meteoric rise in the three weeks since its launch as one of the biggest releases in gaming history. While the argument over whether Palworld is a rip-off of Pokémon is still being debated among fans and Nintendo's lawyers, what's not up for discussion is that the game's overwhelming success has garnered it Microsoft's support moving forward.
In a recent blog post on Xbox Wire, Xbox announced that it will be working directly with Pocketpair, the developers of Palworld, to assist in supplying the resources necessary to keep the momentum of the monster survival game going strong.
"On Xbox’s part, we’re working with Pocketpair to help provide support for Xbox versions of the game," Xbox said in the blog post. "We’re providing support to enable dedicated servers, offering engineering resources to help with GPU and memory optimization, speeding up the process to make Palworld updates available for players, and working with the team to optimize the title for our platform. "
This news comes off the heels of developer Pocketpair announcing that Palworld crossed over 19 million total players across all platforms since its release on January 19. According to the Xbox Wire, Palworld is the biggest 3rd party launch in Game Pass history with over 7 million players and a daily player peak just shy of 3 million.
Palworld's success doesn't stop with Xbox either. Palworld became the second most-played game on Steam ever with an all-time peak of 2,101,867 players, according to SteamDB. As of the time of writing, Palworld is sandwiched between PUBG and Counter-Strike 2 as the most played games in the platform's history.
“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 while in Game Preview will allow us to continue to improve the experience for Pal Tamers across all platforms.”
This news couldn't have come at a better time for Palworld Xbox players seeing as how the game has been a bit more lackluster to play on the console in comparison to its PC counterpart. In our Xbox review, wrote said, "The version of Palworld on Xbox and the Microsoft Store might not be nearly as polished as the Steam version, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a ton of fun. Performance is obviously worse, the audio issues are glaring, you won’t be able to nickname your beloved Pals, and you’re limited to a much smaller group of friends."
There's a good chance any niggling performance and server issues will be addressed swiftly for players now that Xbox has pledged its support in helping Palworld grow.
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.
