2024 had a somewhat shaky start for Xbox as there was almost daily rumours about Microsoft going third-party and launching all their biggest games for their competitors, which ultimately turned out to be mostly false.
But January also offered Xbox gamers the release of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Tekken 8, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Persona 3 Reload. And a certain game called Palworld. While all of these games performed well, Palworld became an outright phenomenon smashing all kinds of records in light-speed. And all this combined led to a pretty impressive record for Xbox.
In an Xbox Wire article about Game Developers Conference, with a special focus on indie studios, Microsoft reveals that "2024 got off to a fast start with players this year — Xbox had its biggest month ever on console this past January, measured by play time". The article says Palworld played a huge part in this as it was revealed last month that it has "more than 10,000,000 players on Xbox", surely helped by the fact that it is included with Game Pass.
We assume it might be a while before this record gets broken as the Palworld craze was absolutely massive, but Microsoft says there are "more than 3500 titles from independent developers in more than 100 countries in active development for Xbox and Windows via the ID@Xbox program". Who knows, maybe one of those could be the next big thing smashing the record once again in the future?