High on Life is the biggest Game Pass launch in 2022 and the biggest 3rd party launch in Game Pass history

Originally published at: High on Life is the biggest Game Pass launch in 2022 and the biggest 3rd party launch in Game Pass history - XboxEra

If you’ve followed High on Life’s rise through the Game Pass and Xbox most played rankings you may already know that the game is very popular on the platform. Xbox has officially shared numbers and they show that High on Life is even bigger than previously believed.

High on Life is the biggest Game Pass launch in 2022, the biggest single player only launch in Game Pass history, and the biggest 3rd party game launch in the services history. Microsoft says these numbers are “measured in terms of engagement, based on the number of hours played in the first five days of release.”

Studio director of Squanch Games is quoted in the press release, saying “we’ve been blown away by the response from the players who have made us the most popular game on Game Pass right now. When Squanch Games was first created, it was to make the games we wanted to play – and Game Pass is helping us reach the players that want to play those games too.”

High on Life continues to be a runaway success and one that could not have been foreseen. It is incredible to see word of mouth propell this game to heights beyond any previously considered expectations.

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Totally deserved! Love this game so much! congrats to Squanch Games and the people at Xbox that believed in the game and the team. :partying_face:

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I wasn’t even interested in this game before, but now I feel like I have to check it out! It’s insane how polarized the reviews are.

Congrats to High on Life and the devs, thats a very nice Christmas present.

And I hope we do remember this as a win for Xbox third party deals and Xbox marketing.

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Holy smokes. I genuinely did not see that coming, but that’s awesome.

Very well deserved, me and my son (18 years old) , both enjoying it immensly, both Rick and Morty fan so that probably helps, and after patches it’s a very polished game and very well made for a Triple-I as Justin likes to call it. Congrats to Squanch Games and Xbox Gamepass team!.

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Good game, the open zones and exploration are way more than I expected based on the game demos.

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Not surprised, been following it on the most played games and as soon as I saw it hit 11th and then 3rd I knew a bunch of people were playing it, it’s also doing big numbers on Steam so safe to say it’s a hit, Microsoft would be smart to sign a sequel immediately and maybe even prolong the exclusivity contract for this one. And this game barely had marketing, I believe the most exposure it got was back when they revealed it at E3 :grimacing:

I’ve played a wee bit of it. Very enjoyable. I like the humour personally but you could always turn it down if you don’t. I also enjoyed The Gunk which felt similar. Well done MS for games like this.

Microsoft better be writing a check for that High on Life sequel haha. With a larger budget and scope, this IP has some serious potential

Don’t mess it up Phil !!

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What’s interesting to see is its having strong player retention because 65% og players defeated first boss and 36% best 2nd. Usually those numbers are much lower with gamepass games

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After playing a couple hours, my reaction is, anyone who doesn’t laugh at the sentence “I call this my Glob Shot, it comes out of my Trick Hole” is a person I don’t want to know. :rofl:

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Seriously I’ve died like 5 times from laughter lol

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I dont like the game at all. But i think part of the success is due to a huge starvation of notable exclusives for xbox and any major release people will try out. I wish i could enjoy it more though but uninsitalled it after 3 hours.

Popular game + game pass = lots of people talking about it which in turn continues to bring more and more people in

Don’t think it’s got anything to do with other releases at all

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How do you explain its popularity on Steam?

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Im talking purely xbox. Steam numbers have dropped a bit

It blew up on tiktok. Its still number two in sales on steam. Rated very positive on every game platform from user reviews.

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Im glad its doing well. If anything its hilarious seeing people asking for the game on PS. Like seriously. Not my type of game. That character talking too much put me off.

no sheet. almost all games especially the SP focused ones dropped sales/player count wise days after release.