High on Life was added to Xbox Game Pass because the game’s creator Justin Roiland had been told that indie games could get as much as a 7x boost in sales by joining the program. As it stands right now, the game has already had the biggest third-party Game Pass launch ever.
Xbox Game Pass is a “value-add” for High on Life
Before deciding to add the non-Rick and Morty game High on Life onto Xbox Game Pass, Roiland did his research and asked around fellow indie studios to see how it worked out for them. The overwhelming consensus was that it was a “value-add” by bringing in players who normally wouldn’t touch the game. Those players will then advertise the game through word of mouth and social media. All in all, Game Pass is a “powerful tool”:
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.
Justin Roiland
The projected 7x sales boost through Game Pass will give Squanch Games a “war chest” that will allow them to make more “fun crazy” games like High on Life. Things are already off to a good start. High on Life is the biggest Xbox Game Pass release of 2022, the biggest third-party Game Pass release ever, and the biggest single-player Game Pass release ever. This sees it beating titles like A Plague Tale: Requiem, Tunic, Rainbow Six Extraction, and Sniper Elite 5.
