Phantom Dust Remaster Crosses 1 Million Players, Much More Than Original Release

Although a full reboot of the cult classic Phantom Dust never came to be, the Phantom Dust remaster that was released last month has proven to be quite a success. Microsoft announced today that the game has passed 1 million players, and it's getting a substantial update on Wednesday.

Creative director Adam Isgreen announced the milestone and detailed the patch on the Phantom Dusted fan site; according to him, the 1 million players mark "blows away the original numbers of players the game had when first released." Although hard numbers are hard to come by, it seems that Phantom Dust only moved a bit more than 50,000 copies in North America when it launched on the original Xbox.

Isgreen also shared the changes coming to the game on Wednesday. The most significant addition is that of a "daily skill reward system" that allows players to earn the skills that came with the original game's expansion. Before this update, these skills hadn't been available in the remaster. As Isgreen explained, "There was no weighting based on what you owned already--it was completely random--leading some players to never be able to earn all the additional skills no matter how many games they played."

Under the new system, logging into the game will get you one free skill per day. You can also get a bonus skill for a week if you play four days during the week. At this rate, it'll take at least 11 weeks to get them all for free, although you can buy a pack with three copies of all of them for $5.

The game is also getting voice chat support, as well as an NPC mission guide. There's a lot more minor changes coming in the update, as well; you can read the full patch notes below.

The Phantom Dust remake is available as a free-to-play game on Xbox One and Windows 10. If you're interested, you can read more about the remaster and how it's different than the original game.

Patch Notes

• Optimized performance options
• Updated Quick Match behavior to handle full lobbies more gracefully
• Resolved screen orientation issue that was present on some devices
• Fixed a bug on PC where title performance would dip on some systems when the VSync toggle option is set to off
• Fixed a bug where the active user can be changed without returning to the Phantom Dust title screen after a prompted sign in following a sign out from the main menu
• Fixed a bug where the cursor navigation inputs remain permanently active when a gamepad is disconnected while a cursor navigation input is held