Microsoft Says Palworld Is the Biggest Ever Third-Party Game Pass Launch (engadget.com) 40
Palworld, a viral "Pokemon with guns" game, has become Microsoft's biggest third-party launch on Game Pass. According to developer Pocketpair, the game sold 12 million copies on Steam and seven million on Xbox since its January 19 launch. A million of the copies were sold in its first eight hours. Engadget reports: In addition to being the biggest third-party Game Pass launch ever, Palworld had the largest third-party day-one launch on Xbox Cloud Gaming (included with Game Pass Ultimate). The game's highest peak since launch was nearly three million daily active users on Xbox. Microsoft says it was the most-played game on Xbox platforms during that period.
Palworld uses Pokemon-esque characters and themes -- enough to catch the attention of Nintendo's lawyers. It has battles with monsters similar to those in the creature-collecting series, including the ability to capture them inside a sphere after winning. But Palworld also includes biting social commentary and incorporates themes you'd never see in Pokemon -- like labor exploitation. "Don't worry, there are no labor laws for Pals," a game FAQ reads. One of the title's trailers showed a player circling hard-at-work Pals with an assault rifle. "Creating a productive base like this is the secret to living a comfortable life in Palworld," the narration reads.
Palworld uses Pokemon-esque characters and themes -- enough to catch the attention of Nintendo's lawyers. It has battles with monsters similar to those in the creature-collecting series, including the ability to capture them inside a sphere after winning. But Palworld also includes biting social commentary and incorporates themes you'd never see in Pokemon -- like labor exploitation. "Don't worry, there are no labor laws for Pals," a game FAQ reads. One of the title's trailers showed a player circling hard-at-work Pals with an assault rifle. "Creating a productive base like this is the secret to living a comfortable life in Palworld," the narration reads.
cool beans, but (Score:1)
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https://letmegooglethat.com/?q... [letmegooglethat.com]
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The whole point of a news article is so I don't have to do my own research. Even more so for acronyms and abbreviations, because most of the time they have multiple meanings and can't easily be searched.
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But at the same time the news article can't include definitions for every single term it uses, for example you don't want it to explain what Google is, otherwise everything would become a wall of text. A game pass is not a Microsoft thing, they are spread in the industry.
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Does the article explain what viral means in this context?
Does the article explain what Pokemon is?
Does the article explain what guns are?
Does the article explain what a game is?
That's just before the first comma in the summary. SOME level of background knowledge has to be assumed, otherwise you are simply too dumb to understand what you're told anyway.
Re: cool beans, but (Score:2)
Yes I know what those are, and have encountered them before. But how could I have possibly known what a Game Pass is? Even the very idea seems bizarre to me after using Steam for free for two decades.
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I don't remember having any problems figuring out what the service was based on the name alone when I first encountered it several years ago. ""Game pass?". Must be a new game service". It's kind of right there in the name
Plus as I said, the service has been around for years now and is being done by one of techs and gamings biggest players. I'm actually surprised anyone who games would not have heard of it by now.
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Game pass is that thing we've talked about on here many times. Did you buy your low user ID from someone else?
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since when was 6 digits a low user id?
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since when was 6 digits a low user id?
Since, in my cursory attempts to figure out the highest registered UID, I hit 4500571, that puts you in the top 20% of UIDs. It'd be nice if pretty much everyone over 2000000 wasn't a bot, but strictly speaking even my lowly seven-digit UID is in the 31st percentile.
Even if we stop counting at 2000000, my account is 16 years old, meaning that seven-digit IDs have been part of Slashdot for almost twice as long a duration of Slashdot's existence than the part that came before. Yours is likely twenty years old
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Yup, we do still pop in.
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I might be biased, but I don't think that you're a "low" user ID unless you are under user ID 200,000. If you are, you're probably one of the "Slashdot OG's" who was here in the 1990's back when Slashdot was new and cool.
Anyway, back on topic. I'm not a fan of Microsoft Game Pass, because the DRM for it is obnoxious. You have to be online to validate that you're still "allowed" to play the game, and the validation system doesn't seem to be particularly stable. When I recently gave it a 1 month trial, there
Re: cool beans, but (Score:2, Funny)
Pokemon with guns (Score:2)
So, they're North American Pokemon? I thought they all went extinct back in 9000 BCE. [xkcd.com]
Lawyers (Score:1)
Palworld uses Pokemon-esque characters and themes -- enough to catch the attention of Nintendo's lawyers.
Imagine if you needed to actually do anything to catch the attention of lawyers. What a world that would be.
Funnily enough (Score:2)
Biggest winner in the Palworld runaway success other than guys who made it is probably the guy at microsoft who managed to sign this title up for gamepass.
Because there's no way in hell microsoft paid anywhere near enough the actual value on this one, as these sort of contracts are negotiated quite a bit in advance.
Hasn't actually launched (Score:3)
Palworld is still in early access.
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but technically it is quite lacking,
Yes but check latest pokemon games. This game is a tech piece of art next to them (and being on switch is not an excuse).
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I have about 60 hours in it so far. At a 30 dollar price tag I'd say I've already gotten my money's worth out of it.
The thing I'm afraid of.... (Score:2)
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You know how many dolls there are that look like girls? Barbie should hire a law firm!
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The company most capable of suing them, Nintendo, has basically already said that they aren't.
From what I've heard, the Palworld creators already ran everything through their lawyers to make sure they weren't infringing in the legal sense. Remember, a lot of the aspects of Pokemon is actually copied from even earlier games. Also, they were sued over an earlier game and won, so Nintendo might be a little gun shy of suing again (heh).
They literally had years to sue palworld and didn't. Meanwhile a paid m
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In online co-op play mode, up to 4 players can play together. Additionally, a dedicated server can allow up to 32 players to play together.
If that dedicated server actually exists and is made available to the players, it's gonna be pretty hard to shut down the game even with DRM. (I.e. One crack and it's never going offline.)
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The most Nintendo can do is to force Pocket Pair to change some of the Pals.
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Let's put this in perspective, shall we?
The game has been in known development for three years. Fans described it as 'pokemon with guns' for at least the past year. Nintendo's lawyers did nothing in all this time.
After the game's launch some guy on Patreon started selling a mod to turn the player character into Ash and numerous pals into Pokemon. Nintendo slapped him with a C&D notice in eight hours.
If Nintendo had anything on Palworld itself whatsoever it would never have made it this far.
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Pokemon is the one that should be sued [cbr.com].
Arf arf! (Score:2)
Dogfighting for kids now has guns!
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It scratches the survival itch, the collectathon itch, the action-RPG itch, all while having lots of vibrant colors and a double-sided "Just one more turn" gameplay - catch one more pal, craft one more thing, build one more part of the base ...
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It scratches the survival itch, the collectathon itch, ........
You failed to mention the best part.... being able to slaughter pokemon en masse and use their spent husks as resources
There are few things as satisfying. Now to find a Barney mod....