Pocketpair’s Palworld became a massive buy to play hit quickly. Now, in a new interview, the company’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, talks about the future, including a decision on business models, with the potential for a live service future floated.
The Palworld team has continued updating the game, including with the big Sakurajima update and PvP arena. Then they announced a big entertainment deal between Sony, Aniplex, and Pocketpair to form Palworld Entertainment. This deal would expand the brand, and merch preorders began soon afterwards, with an initial round of plushies.
The interview, originally published by ASCII Japan and excerpted and translated by Automaton, brings up the business questions. Palworld has reached its big successes as a buy to play game (and featured on Xbox Game Pass). There are still features yet to be added, and the team has committed to developing the game and adding new content, new Pals, raid bosses, and more. Yet, will they do all of those things and complete the game, (which is reminiscent of Crema’s announcement that Temtem would get no more new content), or continue on in some form as a live service title.
“When you think about it from a business perspective, making (Palworld) a live-service game would extend its lifespan and make it more stable in terms of profitability,” Mizobe notes. “However, the game was not initially designed with that approach in mind, so there would be many challenges involved in taking it down the live-service path.”
While there would be challenges, such a move wouldn’t be impossible, as we’ve seen a number of games–from subscription to buy to play games–make the jump to live service, and often, free to play, with microtransactions.
Mizobe himself mentions PUBG and Fall Guys as two games that did successfully make that transition, and how they compensated players for the huge changes. Those changes, he notes, took years, so it might be lucrative, but would involve a lot of commitment.
They are looking towards the community for feedback ahead of an eventual decision, but the CEO has already dismissed one monetization idea. “Steam users hate ads,” he says.
