Palworld may have just come out recently, but its popularity is growing daily as the open-world survival game’s US daily players briefly surpassed Fortnite on Xbox.
Spotted by NPD’s Mat Piscatella, according to the Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, on Monday, January 22, US Xbox players playing Palworld surpassed Fortnite on the same platform. Piscatella also notes that US-based Palworld players played the game for “more than 200 minutes on average,” reiterating that this record only happened for one day, “and it was close.”
According to Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, on January 22nd Palworld surpassed Fortnite in US XBS DAU. On that day alone, Palworld players on XBS in the US played Palworld for more than 200 minutes, on average. Bonkers numbers.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 24, 2024
It’s no surprise, considering Palworld has already sold 7 million copies five days after it was released in Early Access. Fortnite is not the only game it surpassed in terms of player count. Yesterday, it was reported via SteamDB that Palworld posted 1,864,421 concurrent players on Steam, overtaking Counter-Strike to become the second-most-played game ever on Valve’s digital storefront.
If you’re unfamiliar with Palworld, the premise has players in an open world that is populated with creatures known as “Pals. Players can battle and capture Pals that can be used in various ways, including combat.
“Palworld may crib quite a bit from Pokémon’s homework, but deep survival mechanics and a hilarious attitude make it hard to put down – even in Early Access,” we wrote in our early access review in the Steam version of Palworld.
It has been comedically described as being “Pokemon with guns,” with the game being the subject of controversy from the developer Pocketpair disclosing that it had received death threats over its game being a “rip-off” of Nintendo’s popular franchise Pokemon to Nintendo removing a mod that added Pokemon characters such as Ash Ketchum into Palworld.
Additionally, there have been criticisms for the Xbox and Microsoft Store versions of Palworld, which differ from the Steam version and lack dedicated servers.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.