High on Life has enjoyed an incredible launch, especially in terms of pure numbers. Not only did the game top Steam’s sales charts in its debut week, it also became instantly popular on Game Pass right at launch, to the extent that it’s become the biggest ever Game Pass launch for a third party game to date, and the biggest launch for any game on the service in 2022.
The service’s value has, of course, been made clear to players and users on a consistent basis for quite some time now- but the developers who engage with it have also frequently spoken about its benefits. High on Life developer Squanch Games has now joined that growing list as well.
Speaking on a recent episode of the official Xbox Podcast, Rick and Morty co-creator and Squanch Games founder Justin Roiland spoke about the decision to launch day and date on Game Pass and what led to it.
“Before we decided to pull the trigger on it, I spoke with a handful of other studio folks who did Game Pass,” he said. “And I ultimately came to the conclusion based off of what I had heard that it is– it’s a value-add. Because essentially, there’s a lot of people that would otherwise not have picked up the game and played it.
“And those people, if you believe in what you’ve made, and you really you feel confident that you’ve made something special, or different– and we do with our game– those folks can become evangelists in a way for the title.”
“If someone’s on the fence or raising an eyebrow, what is this thing? And if they’re a Game Pass subscriber, well, they can just download it and dive in,” he added. “[It’s] a powerful tool to get a lot of reach. If you really do believe you made something worthwhile, it’s a pretty powerful tool. And that’s what I gathered in doing my due diligence on it on my own. A lot of folks told me that non-Game Pass games that they ship versus Game Pass games, [they get] 7x sales.”
“We are an indie studio,” Roiland said. “We’re small. And we do want a war chest to make a bunch more fun crazy games. And that was of consideration for us. It’s like, ‘OK, we really want this game to get out there. We want it to do. We want sales to do well.’ And I think that, yeah, I mean, from what I gathered in my little poking around and asking different folks, Game Pass was a huge value-add in that respect.”
Of course, exact numbers for how many players High on Life has attracted since launch haven’t yet been revealed, but it’s clear that the comedic first person shooter has done exceedingly well for itself right out the gate, and Game Pass clearly contributed to that significantly. Where the game and its developer go from here on out should be interesting to see.
High on Life is available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.
