High on Life is the Biggest Third Party Launch in Game Pass History

Since its launch last week, High on Life has seen a sudden and surprising explosion in popularity, and in recent days, it’s become clear that the first person shooter’s mixed critical reception hasn’t had too much of an impact in terms of the sheer number of players it has attracted. Microsoft has now made an announcement that gives further indication of that.

As announced via a post on Xbox Wire, High on Life’s day and date launch on Game Pass has clearly paid off for developer Squanch Games, with the shooter enjoying the biggest launch for a game on the service in 2022. More significantly, it’s also the biggest ever Game Pass for a third party game, as well as the biggest ever Game Pass launch for an exclusively single player title. Microsoft says that’s based on player engagement, in terms of the number of hours played in the first five days of the game’s release.

“This was our first time launching a game with Game Pass, and we’ve been blown away by the response from the players who have made us the most popular game on Game Pass right now,” said Mike Fridley, Studio Director and COO of Squanch Games. “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 is an incredibly unique title that we’ve been excited about for a long time,” said Matt Percy, General Manager of Content Planning at Xbox. “It’s fantastic to see so many Game Pass members jump into it at launch to experience Squanch’s story for themselves ahead of the holidays.”

Recently, it was revealed that High on Life was sitting on top of Game Pass’ charts for the most popular current games, surpassing the likes of Minecraft and Forza Horizon 5– even so, the scale of the success it has seen right off the bat is likely to be surprising to many, especially given the fact that this is a new IP by an indie developer. Meanwhile, the shooter also topped Steam’s weekly sales charts upon launch, outselling the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and FIFA 23.

High on Life is available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.