Palworld establishes its own company with Sony Music and Aniplex
PocketPair, Aniplex and Sony Music Entertainment (SME) announced the establishment of the joint venture Palworld Entertainment on July 10. It seems PocketPair’s breakout hit survival game will be expanding to other forms of media going forward.
The newly established Palworld Entertainment aims to consolidate various (non-game) licensing operations of Palworld and expand the IP on a worldwide scale. The company will also establish cooperation with Sony Group, which will be reflected in the ongoing development of Palworld (which is currently in Early Access).
In line with the joint venture’s announcement, Palworld merchandise that’s scheduled to go on sale at the PocketPair booth at China’s Bilibili World 2024 on July 12 will be available to order online via Aniplex, Aniplex of America and Aniplex Shanghai.
Incidentally, earlier this year, PocketPair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe mentioned on his personal X account that the development team had been casually making a card game for fun on his personal X account. Looking back, this may have been a prototype for the IP’s expansion. It will be interesting to see whether Palworld Entertainment releases an official Palworld card game.
This is great news for Sony. They finally have a rival to Pokémon and can help provide tons of resources for Merchandise, Anime and Manga to make Palworld a worldwide franchise. Although I do think Pocketpair will remain independent and work on other IP’s. This is exciting. First real victory Sony has had for a decade besides Crunchyroll.