Unsurprisingly, Palworld is making a ton of money, but that doesn’t mean PocketPair will suddenly turn to triple-A games.
Palworld isn’t as well-known as it was earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doing well. In fact, it appears to be making a killing, at least according to PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe. He spoke about the developer’s plans in a recent interview with GameSpark (translated by Automaton). It’s normal for a studio to want to expand and hire more staff when they have a hit game, but Mizobe said PocketPair wants to see how far it can go while still maintaining “independent development.” He went on to say, “Looking at the global trend of AAA games, it has become difficult to develop a game with a large team and ensure it becomes a hit.”
Manage Cookie Settings
While Palworld may be the game that PocketPair has been making games for a while. In fact, the success of its previous game was the reason it made Palworld in the first place. The success of its much smaller game Overdungeon meant it could make Craftopia, and the success of Craftopia meant it could continue to make Palworld. But Mizobe says PocketPair won’t be continuing this “snowball effect” with future games.
“Although we don’t talk about it publicly, Palworld’s sales are in the tens of billions of yen. If we develop the next game based on these earnings as we have in the past, not only will the scale exceed AAA, but our organizational maturity will not be able to keep up, or more precisely, we are simply not suited to such a thing.” It sounds like Skull and Bones still has the AAA throne for now.
Mizobe doesn’t seem that interested in AAA or AAA games, as he explains: “If you ask me if there are any games I would be willing to make with such a huge budget, the answer is no. I want to pursue some interesting independent game ideas.”
So even if Palworld isn’t the most original in places, at least it always has an independent essence (plus, the Pokemon Company never seems to do anything about accusations of plagiarism).
