With the profit from Palworld, PocketPair could go “beyond AAA” with their next title, but they intend to keep things sustainable and “on an indie scale,” according to CEO 

After becoming a global hit and topping 25 million sales in just a month after its Early Access release, Palworld saw the establishment of Palworld Entertainment. The joint venture with Aniplex and Sony Music Entertainment Japan is a clear sign that the monster collecting franchise is headed for multimedia expansion, but what are PocketPair’s plans in terms of the developer’s growth and their future titles? CEO Takuro Mizobe commented on the topic in a recent interview with Game*Spark. 

While increasing staff and expanding the scale of development would be the expected route following the release of a hit-seller, PocketPair is planning to see how far they can go while keeping things “on an indie scale,” according to Mizobe. “Looking at global trends for AAA games, it’s become difficult to develop a game with a large team and ensure it becomes a hit.”

On the flip side of the AAA scene’s struggles is the indie scene’s boom, Mizobe reckons, as the improvement of game engines and other conditions in the industry have made it so that developers can make “games that are good and can take off globally” without being large-scale. 

Palworld’s predecessor, Craftopia, was made using the humble profit from PocketPair’s Overdungeon, and in turn, Craftopia’s success laid the foundation for Palworld’s development. PocketPair has gradually grown thanks to this “snowball effect,” but it seems the company does not intend to continue expanding in this way. “Although we don’t talk about it publicly, sales of Palworld are in the tens of billions of yen. If we were to develop our next game based on these proceeds, as we have done in the past, not only would the scale go beyond AAA, but we wouldn’t be able to keep up with this in terms of our organization’s maturity, or better put, we aren’t structured for something like that at all.” 

But apart from recent trends being unfavorable for AAA development and PocketPair not currently possessing the structure to go bigger, it seems Mizobe is not interested in AAA games as a creator either. “Besides, if you ask me if there’s any game I would like to make with such an enormous budget, there isn’t. I want to pursue ideas that are interesting as indie games.” 

In addition, given PocketPair’s past as a small developer, Mizobe comments that the company’s growth so far has been “thanks to the indie game community,” which is why they have a strong desire to give back to the indie community.