The initially hyped title Palworld could switch to a free-to-play model in the future for sustainable success. However, a final decision on this has apparently not yet been made.
What will happen to the initially hyped Palworld in the future? Takuro Mizobe, CEO of developer PocketPair, has now commented on this in an interview. Internally, there are also discussions and considerations about whether Palworld will switch to a free-to-play model in the future.
The survival title, which has so far been released for PC and Xbox, attracted over 25 million players in the first month after its release in January alone, but since then the hype and thus the number of players has noticeably declined. So how can Palworld be set up for a successful future?
In conversation with ASCII.jp Mizobe brings up the possibility of switching to a live service model. The CEO of PocketPair assumes that Palworld would benefit if it were basically free to play and adopted the business model of other free-to-play titles with microtransactions and cosmetic items, etc.
“It’s common for live service games to be free-to-play with paid elements like skins and battle passes, but Palworld is currently a buy-to-play game and it’s therefore difficult to transform it from the ground up into a live service game,” says Mizobe, citing the existing problem. After all, millions of players have already purchased Palworld for around 30 dollars/euro.
However, the declining number of players still makes the free-to-play model interesting for the developers, which is why further considerations are likely to be made internally. However, a final decision has apparently not yet been made.
When the big summer update was released in June and Palworld’s price was reduced for the first time as part of the Steam Summer Sale, the number of players increased massively; this underlines the potential of the game if it were basically free to play. In the interview, Mizobe cited PUBG and Fall Guys as examples of successful conversions to the free-to-play model, but these games also took several years to achieve this.
In the short term, the announcement and release of a PS5 version of the survival game should ensure more success; if the organizers, CESA, are to be believed, then it could be as early as the upcoming Tokyo Game Show on September 26th. However, this has not yet been officially confirmed.
Palworld – Sakurajima Update Trailer
