Palia reaches over 3m players in six months thanks to "invaluable" Switch partnership
Singularity 6's cosy MMO Palia has reached over 3 million players in six months ahead of its launch on Steam on March 25.
The studio's debut title — a fantasy mix of life simulation and MMORPG — launched last August with a PC open beta via its own website and launcher, followed by a release on the Epic Games Store in October. The game then launched on Nintendo Switch in December.
As for how Palia achieved this feat, Singularity 6 director of business strategy Yu Sian Tan tells GamesIndustry.biz it was a combination of captivating players and the game's release on Nintendo Switch.
"We believe that we struck a chord with players when we wanted to expand the community sim experience by making it more social, creating an environment that encourages players to be kind to one another and having an overarching narrative that players can dive into," she says, adding that Nintendo's involvement and supporting in development and marketing aided an increase in player numbers.
"[Their support] is invaluable to us as a new game studio," Tan adds. "After our launch on the Nintendo Switch, our partnership with Nintendo has only grown stronger."
Tan says Palia's launch on Nintendo provided a "big boost" to the title compared to the PC open beta due to the "flexibility" of the portable console.
"It also meant we were launching on a new platform and now supported cross-platform play so things definitely got a lot more interesting for the team," she says.
Despite this boost in player numbers, Tan notes that maintaining player engagement is one of the biggest challenges of overseeing the success of a free-to-play MMO.
"The free-to-play approach can be challenging because it involves a bit of a balancing act between offering engaging gameplay for free, but also introducing effective monetisation strategies that do not alienate players or cause unnecessary pressure that would run antithetical to the cosy community sim gameplay we are trying to encourage in Palia," she explains.
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