Palworld smashes past 5 million sales despite Game Pass launch

Open world survival game and Pokémon clone Palworld has already smashed past 5 million sales, despite launching on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

An absolutely massive launch, Palworld has already sold more during its launch period than AAA RPGs including Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring.

In our review, we said that Palworld was more than a Pokémon clone. While it merges components from countless modern games, its Frankenstein of mechanics makes for a very enjoyable time.

“Palworld is a Frankenstein's monster of ideas, mostly inspired by Nintendo's franchises like Pokemon and the recent Zelda games,” reads our review. “However, it feels like a refreshing take on the survival genre, with the only issues being an overwhelming and lengthy core game loop that may discourage some players.”

Despite being available only on PC and Xbox, and also being included for free in the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, Palworld developer PocketPair revealed that five million copies have been sold. At one point, the game was selling 86,000 copies per hour.

Late Friday, Palworld was already seeing over 360,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. However, as more players hopped on during the weekend, over 1.29 million concurrent Steam players were enjoying the game.

However, the game has not been without controversy. Despite its popularity, or maybe because of it, the game has been heavily criticised for its lack of originality, with plagiarism and AI generated art accusations being thrown at the title.

PocketPair’s controversial game is currently an Xbox and PC exclusive during its early access period with no Palworld PlayStation port or Nintendo Switch port currently planned at the time of writing. However, we fully expect to see the title on PS5 in the near future.

In its early access state, Palworld is expected to become even better over the next few years. Already in development for around three years, Palworld’s current state is — hopefully — the roughest the game will ever be.