January 2024 biggest month in Xbox history

In a new Xbox Wire blog post dropped while attending GDC, ID@Xbox lead Chris “Do a Kickflip” Charla detailed many of the milestones and accomplishments the ID@Xbox team have achieved since the program came into being. Alongside some neat little tidbits which are detailed below, one stood out – January 2024 was the biggest month in Xbox history for time played on console.

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 (including ID@Xbox program member Pocket Pair, whose Xbox Game Preview title, Palworld, has more than 10,000,000 players on Xbox so far!). 

Chris “Do a Kickflip” Charla via Xbox Wire.

In a year where we’re seeing mass-layoffs, and sales of the Xbox console down significantly YoY for February, it’s nice to see a little good news every now and then.

Helping independent developers reach more players

ID@Xbox now have over 3500+ titles in development from indie devs and team from across 100 countries in active development, and ID@Xbox have a launched a relatively new “pitch portal“.

This was designed to enable members of the program to pitch their projects for a possible Game Pass Deal or other helpful initiatives.

According to Chris, this portal has now been used by hundreds of studios, all submitting their games for consideration.

While we don’t publicly talk about our deals before they’re announced, we can say that opening up this process more transparently and publicly has been a huge step forward, to ensure the curators at Xbox across Game Pass and other programs get access to the broadest variety of games to consider, so we can keep bringing players the best selection of games on Earth.

While we’re incredibly excited to meet old and new friends from development studios this week at the Game Developer’s Conference, travelling to San Francisco (or anywhere) to meet Xbox staff in person shouldn’t be a pre-requisite to get a game in consideration for a deal — and I am happy to say that it no longer is.  

Chris “Do a Kickflip” Charla via Xbox Wire.

ID@Xbox Updates

Other updates include the recently announced “Indie Selects” program, designed to highlight unique games from ID@Xbox developers. It has a focus on titles not already enjoying the marketing highlights provided by inclusion into Xbox Game Pass itself.

As someone that really misses the golden days of Xbox Live Arcade, it’s a great addition to the store.

ID@Xbox now has full “business hours” coverage for members of the program, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and with the recent efforts to support countries across Africa, India and Southeast Asia, there are more than 100 titles in development for Xbox consoles from those regions.

Games remain a hit driven business, but we believe in a future where every game has a reasonable shot in front of its intended audience to make a critical and commercial impact. This is crucial to our dual vision to bring players the widest and deepest array of games to play, and to enable developers to have a sustainable future creating and entertaining us for years to come.

And from what we’ve seen coming, we’re incredibly optimistic about the future of games and developers on Xbox. 

Chris “Do a Kickflip” Charla via Xbox Wire.

ID@Xbox continues to go from strength to strength, and as someone who plays more indie games than anything else, I’m very glad for it’s continuing success!

For all the details, go check out the blog post in full over on XboxWire.