Palworld surpasses 19 million total players, overtakes Pokémon Legends: Arceus in 2 weeks

After a brief drought in updates, Pocketpair has now dropped a massive piece of news—confirming Palworld has surpassed 19 million total players since launch. 

This new number is the first time we have seen player totals from the Xbox Series X/S version of Palworld added to the Steam sales. It’s also overtaking other massive games when it comes to sales—with this recent update pushing it past several Pokémon titles like Pokémon Legends: Arceus. 

According to Pocketpair, Palworld has had 12 million players on Steam and seven million on Xbox on console or through the Xbox PC app, though we don’t know if the player totals for Xbox include Game Pass downloads or are straight sales. Xbox did clarify in a PR statement that Palworld is the biggest third-party launch in Game Pass history and the game has averaged nearly three million daily active users on Xbox overall. 

Since launch, Palworld has dominated the Steam leaderboards, becoming just the second game to ever crack two million concurrent players on the platform and holding an average of 1.1 million daily users. Pair that with Xbox’s rough estimate of three million active daily users and Palworld has around four million people running around catching Pals every day. 

Whether or not those Xbox users translate to sales or not, Palworld’s total player count has eclipsed the sales of all but four Pokémon games in just two weeks. Pokémon Red, Green, and Blue, Pokémon Gold and Silver, Pokémon Sword and Shield, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are still ahead of the indie juggernaut for now—though Gen IX’s 22.66 million in total sales as of November 2023 is looking well within reach over the coming months. These player numbers will also only grow if Palworld is eventually released on PlayStation, mobile, and Nintendo Switch.

All of this momentum is happening while Palworld is still in early access too, meaning the game should only improve and receive more content as Pocketpair works through its content roadmap and toward a targeted 2025 full release. With this new announcement, the devs noted they will “continue to prioritize fixing bugs” for the foreseeable future.