A simultaneous launch of High on Life 2 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC is all because of how well the first game sold on each platform. According to Squanch Games CEO Mike Fridley, the decision to have a simultaneous launch this go around was due to Sony's platform being the "lead platform" for the first game.
High on Life was a seven month timed-exclusive on Xbox. The game was also available day one on Game Pass. Despite all of this, the PlayStation platform ended up being the lead platform for sales.
Fridley, in an interview with TechRadar, says that even with the several month head start, sales of the game on the Xbox platform came in behind every other platform.
Shockingly, even after a delay on the Sony launch—because of an exclusivity clause with the first game that Microsoft had—[PlayStation is] still our lead platform.
Fridley continues on to say that the price increase for Game Pass, which began to roll out in late 2025, also made a simultaneous launch a more attractive option for Squanch Games. He assumes that subscription numbers for Game Pass went "down a bit" so it was "an easy business decision" to have a simultaneous launch.
Finally, Fridley also concedes that by having a simultaneous launch of the sequel across all platforms they're able to save money on marketing. Plainly speaking, he says, "it's just cheaper. We don't have to do two marketing pushes... we're just piggybacking off our own marketing to sell the same copy."
High on Life 2 was released on February 13th and has earned itself some generally favorable review scores as it sits at 74% on OpenCritic.
