It should come as no surprise that Palworld is making a ton of money, but that doesn’t mean PocketPair will suddenly switch to triple-A games.
Palworld isn’t talked about as much as it was at the beginning of the year, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still doing well. In fact, it sounds like it’s printing money, at least according to PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe, who recently spoke about the developer’s plans in an interview with GameSpark (as translated Machine). It’s normal for studios to want to expand and hire more staff when they have a hit, but Mizobe said PocketPair wants to see how far it can go while maintaining “indie-scale” development. He added: “Looking at the global trends in triple-A games, it’s hard to develop a game with a large team and make sure it’s a hit.”
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While Palworld was probably the game that put PocketPair on your radar, the company has been making games for a while now. In fact, the success of its previous games is what allowed it to create Palworld. Its much smaller title Overdungeon being a success meant it could create Craftopia, and that success meant it could continue working on Palworld. But Mizobe says PocketPair won’t continue that “snowball effect” into future games.
“Although we don’t talk about it publicly, Palworld’s sales are in the tens of billions of yen. If we were to develop our next game based on that revenue as we have done in the past, not only would the scale exceed triple-A, but we wouldn’t be able to keep up with it in terms of the maturity of our organization, or to put it another way, we’re not prepared for something like that at all.” It sounds like Skull and Bones will retain its throne of four for now.
Mizobe doesn’t seem particularly interested in triple-A or quadruple-A titles, explaining, “if you ask me if there’s any game I’d want to make with a budget that big, there isn’t. I want to pursue ideas that are interesting as indie games.”
So even if Palworld isn’t the most original in places, it will at least always have an indie element to it (plus, as it turns out, The Pokemon Company never did anything about the plagiarism accusations).
