Palworld breaks Xbox Cloud Gaming traffic record, sees huge wait times

Palworld has been one of the biggest games of what little 2024 has passed. So big, in fact, that Palworld broke the Xbox Cloud Gaming record for highest traffic day-one releases from a third-party.

Palworld brings some of the most interesting game mechanics and piles it into a single game that can only be described as if Ark: Survival Evolved and Pokemon had an open-world baby. It’s an adventurous and colorful title that certainly grabs your attention, along with 7 million others.

According to Xbox, within the first ten days of its initial release onto the Xbox Cloud Gaming platform, Palworld garnered the highest number of players for a day one release. On PC and console, that number runs past 7 million players. While Xbox isn’t specific about how many players joined in on the cloud, it makes it clear that traffic was heavy.

The game itself is still under the Cloud Gaming Preview program, meaning you’re likely to come across certain bugs and/or issues during your playing time. Users have noted that wait times during that first initial release soared into the 35-minute area or even worse (via Windows Central). With traffic that high, wait times like that are to be expected.

9to5Google’s take

Xbox’s Cloud Gaming program is still new, and its very nature means that high traffic may cause issues, as was experienced in Palworld’s first days. Only so many machines are able to run the game at one time for users to stream from, and having millions of available units doesn’t seem feasible for a service that costs $17/month. That isn’t necessarily cheap, but it still doesn’t touch GeForce Now’s higher tier costs.

The fact that a record-breaking number of players opened up Xbox’s Cloud Gaming service to play Palworld is a big positive, whether that’s because they’re trying it before installing the game locally, or they want to “quickly” jump into a new title with no digital strings attached.

The influx will also – hopefully – push Xbox to refine the experience further, opening up more space for players to jump in with a shorter wait time. Xbox has already noted that the team is working with the developers to optimize the game both in GPU and memory capabilities.