Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony-owned subsidiary Aniplex have announced a joint venture forming Palworld Entertainment, which has become responsible for expanding the Palworld IP and its "commercial business endeavours" beyond the game. That is despite the fact the game itself isn't even available on PS5 yet.
In a press release, it's announced the two groups will first help developer Pocketpair produce merchandise based on the game, which will be on sale at the Pocketpair booth at Bilbili World this weekend in China. The merchandise will then be available online for pre-order later on. "The joint venture will be responsible for developing the reach of the intellectual property and for expanding commercial business endeavors, including the global licensing and merchandising activities associated with Palworld, outside of the interactive game."
Of course, Sony Music Entertainment and PlayStation are two different sectors within the Japanese company so there's nothing stopping it from teaming up the Palworld maker for commercial endeavours. The good news for PS5 owners is that a port has been teased on a few occasions now, so it seems the game will come across to PlayStation at some point in the future. Pocketpair has been in talks to bring the game to platforms beyond Xbox and PC, and a PS5 version was teased two weeks ago.
What do you make of this business move? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 19
It's only a matter of time now before the PS5 version comes out. I can't say I'm thrilled about this partnership though as the game is pretty much dead now and is now way going to be challenging Pokémon like they want it to by the looks of it. I'm still surprised it's lasted this long as there's quite a few monster designs that are blatantly copy and paste from Pokémon.
UltimateOtaku91 wrote:
Err... Palworld had 91,799 concurrent players in the last 24 hours on Steam, making it the 16th most played game on Steam right now
@themightyant also it's in early access. People will come whenever there are major updates. Those numbers are very good.
@themightyant Ah my bad then I'm just going by what people are saying online about it, saw yesterday as well that it went from an average of 1.1 million players per day in January to 440K in February and then was at just 20k in May.
Just checked an the last 30 days are averaging 40k per day so it has gone down overall but went up slightly for the update. So yeah it's not dead by any means but it seems the big hype around it suddenly dropped off.
@UltimateOtaku91 The big hype did drop off. But it was the second most played game EVER on Steam at release, that was never going to last. It's numbers are still fantastic for a game of that size and scope. Not every live service has to be Fortnite, PUBG or Genshin levels of ongoing success to succeed.
@UltimateOtaku91 The recent update gave it a massive boost, which is fairly commonplace for live service games. I imagine it'll follow a similar cycle now of getting huge boosts with updates, then slowing down again until the next update.
Of course, it'll never hit those stratospheric launch highs again, but that's to be expected.
@UltimateOtaku91 that why we don't listen to random people on the Internet with no real numbers
@UltimateOtaku91 I mean sure, the big hype died down but it's literally the 16th most played PC game in the world still. I'd say it's very much alive and kicking.
@UltimateOtaku91 It seems Sony's just taking a chance on it and if they can actually become something even slightly comparable to the Pokémon company then it will have obviously paid off.
They must think the potential for toys, anime/live action movies and even a card game from the IP is worth it also Aniplex actually handles some very successful mobile games like FGO so maybe they could eventually make something together and I'm sure it'll get a big player boost with an inevitable PS5 port paired with another update.
It’s a live service game, so of course Sony wants a piece of the pie. I suspect it’ll be on PS soon enough.
Honestly, Palworld is practically the most “this is just ok” game I’ve played this year, so I don’t get the hype, but, hey, that’s 2024 in games for me in a nutshell so far.
@somnambulance this isn't about the service dude. This is about the fact that the game was super popular in Japan and japanese people like to buy stuff so if the ip is already popular start making stuff. They already announced plushies, japanese people have new cranes with plushies every anime new season so you know they love their plushies. The next step is an anime and Sony has been doing great with anime these days. Your opinion about the game is accurate but this move goes beyond the game.
I don't know if this a good or bad move but Sony making it's own Pokémon company sounds like a lot of interesting situations in the future. Merchandising, music, anime, all the good stuff japanese people like to enjoy lol. Now it makes sense why the reiteration that Nintendo didn't make any legal moves against them was around last week.
The interesting situations start with the fact that this doesn't necessarily mean the game is going to be on ps5 because Aniplex always works independently and doesn't favor PlayStation, that's why they have published switch "exclusives" lol. Of course the game releasing on PS is just a matter of time but that's because of the money and not because of Aniplex.
Also if MS saw any kind of possibility of making this their own Pokémon that pretty much is done, these kinds of moves are from guys who want all the money without being owned by others.
@somnambulance Wait… since when is Palworld a live service game? They don’t have a cash shop and there’s no option for perpetual fees. Could it be added later? Yeah, but at this time it’s just a one time purchase.
I completely forgot this existed and know virtually nothing about it. Is a live service game? Is it online focussed?
If so, it should have been on every available platform from the start.
@Wilforce Live service games can be full paid games with no mtx, live service just means it's constantly getting new content added similar to No Man's Sky and Animal Crossing which were also classed as live service.
Interesting to see this taking the Pokémon company route but only time will tell if this will be a massive success as Pokemon but tbh, I doubt it would. It could be a popular franchise but not in the same level as Pokemon, I doubt.
On the flip side, I do want this to be popular enough that it would make Gamefreak step up their game in terms of the quality of the Pokemon games they are making.
@GymratAmarillo @Wilforce I suppose you’re right that it’s not currently a live service title at this time. The way it’s structured just feels like it will become one down the line. I only played for maybe a dozen hours or so.
It’s really interesting how this is going down with Sony. I didn’t know that about Aniplex. That’s genuinely really interesting to me. Given that Xbox is a husk in Japan, I am surprised Palworld isn’t on PS. I wonder if Nintendo will allow it on Switch 2…
@somnambulance Personally the definition for live service is entirely different because I’ve seen games like No Man’s Sky and Sea of Thieves. I’m simply more impressed that Sony of all companies is doing this considering how close the devs are/were to Microsoft. Let alone the fact that many in Japanese media were being pressured by Nintendo to essentially pretend Pal World doesn’t exist or risk losing sponsorships and promotional deals.
@UltimateOtaku91 Sakimura island just came out theres more than 67k players on atm its far from dead once they introduce about 4-6 more islands this game will become GTAV status
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