Palworld creator wants to avoid "big-budget triple-A games" in the future as the hit survival game's profits are "too big for a studio with our size to handle"
Mar. 15, 2024Pocketpair is remaining small amid Palworld’s giant success
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Palworld’s creator wants the development studio to stay small because “big-budget triple-A games are not for us.”
Palworld certainly performed like a big-budget blockbuster as the monster-taming survival game hadover two million Steam players logged in at the same time, rivaling the very biggest hits on the platform. Pocketpair CEO and director Takuro Mizobe now claims the team won’t substantially grow, despite the game’s staggering success.
“We are and will remain a small studio,” Mizobe explains in an interview withBloomberg. “I want to make multiple small games. Big-budget triple-A games are not for us.” The studio previously developed card-battler Overdungeon, party drawing game AI: Art Imposter, and the genre-blending open-worlder Craftopia, though all were relatively inexpensive projects.
Palworld itself reportedly cost around one billion yen (or $6.7 million) to develop, a number that’s minuscule compared to theunsustainable budgets at other big studios. The game has since returned several billions of yen in profit, though the CEO reckons it’s “too big for a studio with our size to handle.”
Mizobe believes that smaller studios spearhead innovation in game design, and with Palworld pretty much bankrolling whatever the team works on next, Pocketpair has free reign to work on whatever it wishes in the future. Mizobe reveals that the studio has no plans to become a publicly traded company, and has had no acquisition conversations withMicrosoft, who they partnered with on asuccessful Game Pass launch.
For now, the director seems sure on how to go forward: by creating games that are fun to watch, fun to play, and fun to discuss. “Games are most fun when playing with friends,” Mizobe continued. “A game without a multiplayer mode just doesn’t feel right in the era we live today.”
It’s no surprise, then, to seePvP and a Pal versus Pal Arena heavily highlighted in the game’s content roadmap. Some other"very cool things"were recently teased for the “Pokemon with guns” hit, too.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
In the meantime, check out thisDS-style Palworld demake that is inspired by Pokemon Black and the handheld Zelda games.
Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.
A mysterious Palworld update appears to make a change designed to get around the survival game’s legal battle with Nintendo
Five years later, PUBG creator PlayerUnknown finally reveals his massive open-world survival game projects, aiming for “realistic worlds thousands of kilometers wide” across three games
After 48 hours and 729 deaths, Elden Ring sicko takes on the RPG’s hardest challenge so far by beating the base game and DLC on NG+ 1,000 without getting hit once
