Portal-style shooter Splitgate surpasses 600,000 downloads on console in first week

The market is making room for another free-to-play shooter. While players continue to show up for Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone (and hype builds for Halo Infinite and Ubisoft’s XDefiant), developer 1047 Games’ shooter Splitgate surpassed 600,000 downloads on consoles. The Portal-style competitive game was able to move past that milestone in under a week since its launch on Xbox and PlayStation platforms.

“I want to sincerely thank every single player who has taken a chance on our game,” 1047 cofounder and chief executive officer Ian Proulx said. “From its small beginnings as a student project when we were in college to today, where we’re on the verge of launching across two generations of consoles, this is a dream come true for me and the result of incredibly hard work by everyone at our studio.”

Splitgate is in beta on consoles. Its official launch date is July 27. And 1047 is using this soft-launch period to work out some of the game’s issues. Right now, that primarily means ensuring the game’s servers can handle the size of its audience.

“So far, our community has been gracious and understanding of our downtime as we work to release various bottlenecks that have occurred as more people jump in to play,” 1047 chief technology officer Nicholas Bagamian said. “We are a small, growing team and are working around the clock to make sure that our transition to launch is as smooth as possible so that as many people who want to play can jump in without issues.”

Splitgate originally launched on Steam for PC in 2019. It has since earned a Very Positive rating from players, and Proulx insisted that 1047 has no plans to leave long-time fans behind.

“I especially want to thank our loyal PC players who have stuck with us since our game first rolled out on Steam,” said Proulx. “We cannot wait to continue to iterate on Splitgate and grow the game alongside our growing fans.”