Palworld hits 1 million copies sold in just 8 hours

It turns out that the idea of “Pokémon with guns” appears to be pretty popular. Pocket Pair, the developers behind Palworld, have announced that their fledgling title is already selling incredibly well.

How well, you ask? Well, the team revealed that sales for the newly released game have already crossed the million copies sold mark – and that was in just eight hours.

Described by the development team as a “monster-catching, survival and crafting game”, Palworld just launched yesterday on Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview. It’s also available for Xbox Game Pass, though the subscription service isn’t typically accounted for in sales figures.

Momentum was strong for Palworld leading up to its release. The night before launch, the game was ranked third on Steam’s Wishlist page. On top of that, the hodgepodge project is currently trending on X at the time of this article being published.

I describe Palworld as a hodgepodge project because it seems to borrow lots of different ideas from other notable games. In his recent impressions of the Early Access build, Destructoid’s Eric Van Allen noted that on top of there being similarities to the Pokémon series, there are also elements of Breath of the Wild, Rust, Valheim, and Monster Hunter incorporated throughout too.

Again, Palworld will remain in an Early Access/Game Preview build for at least a year according to its Steam page. There are plenty of additions and changes that Pocket Pair plans to implement in the coming months. Amongst them will be new monsters to catch, new areas and dungeons to explore, fresh buildings and items for survival, and more. The development team also noted that they “are also considering incorporating entirely new game systems based on player feedback and ideas.”