Most popular Xbox games — Palworld dethrones Fortnite to become No 1

Witness this day, for we may never see its like again. Fortnite has held the top spot since pretty much the dawn of time, backed up by Minecraft and CoD or GTA V in second or third, and it's highly unusual to see anything change this line-up — but Palworld has done it. Palworld made its first appearance last week in third, and has now claimed the number one spot in our most played Xbox games list for the week ending January 28, 2024.

The Pal-collecting game, which mashes together exploration, survival, crafting, breeding, and all sorts of bizarre things, is most fondly known as "Pokémon with guns." It's taken the gaming world by storm, amassing huge amounts of players and hitting sales milestones in quick succession. That's not to say it's without its issues (including the Pokémon lawyers lurking in the side-lines, with the Pokémon Company to investigate over possible IP infringement), and the game is working on fixing problems such as cheating and general stability. In fact, another Xbox update just dropped. Since Palworld is still in Game Preview, it should in theory only improve from here, but it'll be interesting to see how it fares in future gameplay charts. The initial boost for new Game Pass titles isn't permanent, but Palworld is still very new with more content to come, and it's multiplayer which should help it, as solely single-player games don't tend to stay on these charts too long.

Fortnite has been knocked down to second, with CoD in third, Minecraft in fourth, and GTA V in fifth. There's not too much of a change until we get to Hell Let Loose, which joined Game Pass earlier this month and has fallen four spots this week to 18th. The Finals continues to fall, dropping three places to 19th this week. Diablo IV is back in the top 40 at 21st, possibly as a result of the Season of the Construct kicking off. Resident Evil 2 has dropped a bit to 24th, perhaps as more players move onto newer Game Pass additions, while Sea of Thieves is back up by three spots to 25th following the start of Season 11.

We then have the usual shuffle of games moving up or down a few spots to make room for the new additions. Far Cry 6 has dropped five spots to 32nd — it joined Game Pass last month, so players might now be finishing up with it. For Honor has just made it back into the top 40 at 39th, while Madden NFL 23 is at 40th. Looking ahead, we have Persona 3 Reload, along with all the other upcoming Game Pass games, as well as big releases such as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

Chart compiled using gameplay data from over 2.4 million active Xbox accounts. Chart information is copyright GameInsights. For details on how the chart is calculated, click here.