Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe isn’t sure that taking Palworld free-to-play with a live service model is the right move. In a new interview with ASCII.jp, the exec gave his thoughts about the future of the title, both seeing the positives and negatives of such a massive change.
“When you think about it from a business perspective, making it a live-service game would extend its lifespan and make it more stable in terms of profitability,” Mizobe said. “However, the game was not initially designed with that approach in mind, so there would be many challenges involved in taking it down the live-service path.”
With millions of players having already purchased the game, switching to a free-to-play model wouldn’t be without complications. While it may make the developer more money over time, it would take several years to make the shift.
“It is common for live-service games to be free-to-play with paid elements such as skins and battle passes, but Palworld is a buy-to-play game, so it’s difficult to turn it into a live-service game from the ground up,” Mizobe explained.
A PS5 version of Palworld recently appeared on a list of games set to appear at this month’s Tokyo Game Show.
Palworld was released in early access in January 2024 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. As of February 2024, the game had sold over 15 million copies. After drawing in over two million players at launch, Palworld lost over 84 percent of its playerbase in its first month. With the recent release of the game’s new Sakurajima update, however, fans flocked back to the open-world creature collector, seeing a 700% increase in concurrent players on Steam in July.
