One of 2024’s biggest games, Palworld, was not developed by a big team. In fact, Pocketpair founder Takuro Mizobe recently told Bloomberg that the studio is tight-knit because it’s modest in size, comprising just 55 people in Tokyo. Mizobe also said that he not only wants to keep Pocketpair independent, but that the studio currently has no plans to work on big-budget, “triple-A” games.
Speaking to Bloomberg on March 14, Mizobe clarified that smaller studios are the biggest pioneers in game design. Pocketpair’s Palworld, the “Pokémon with Guns” survival game, dominated much of the zeitgeist after its January 19 launch. With the game attracting millions of players and earning millions of dollars, Mizobe doesn’t plan on blowing all that revenue in one place. He told Bloomberg that he wants to keep Pocketpair pretty small, shooting down any potential ideas that the studio is chatting with Microsoft about an acquisition.
“We are and will remain a small studio,” he said. “I want to make multiple small games. Big-budget triple-A games are not for us.”
Mizobe, who previously worked at the investment banking firm JPMorgan as a tech engineer, said he isn’t sure if Pocketpair could create another Palworld-like hit. Despite that, he’s confident he knows what gamers want these days.
“Games are most fun when playing with friends,” he said. “A game without a multiplayer mode just doesn’t feel right in the era we live today.”
Kotaku has reached out to Pocketpair for comment.
Palworld has been a massive success for Pocketpair, pulling in over 25 million players since launch. The studio has kept up with the game, too, regularly dropping updates that fix everything from save corruption issues to a fan-fave bug that Pocketpair apologized for patching up. While Palworld’s been getting all the attention, it also drew the Eye of Sauron that is Nintendo, with the Pokémon Company announcing on January 24 that it plans to investigate the game. Yikes.
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