Final summer season, Palworld developer Pocketpair signed a take care of Sony Music Leisure to produce merchandise, music, and different merchandise round Palworld. Although the deal was merely a enterprise settlement to increase the Palworld universe outdoors of video games, various followers mistook it for an indication that an acquisition was on the horizon. Particularly after rumors earlier in the year that Pocketpair was in talks with Microsoft for that very cause.
All that acquisition speak wasn’t true on the time, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe later confirmed, however it certain did get dialog began. Since then, various followers have speculated on a possible Pocketpair acquisition, particularly within the wake of Microsoft seemingly buying half the AA business in only a few years and allegedly courting Japanese builders, and Sony making a number of acquisitions of its personal in response.
So will Pocketpair ever get acquired? In the end, it’s up to Mizobe, however once I requested communications director and publishing supervisor John ‘Bucky’ Buckley about it on the Recreation Builders Convention final month, he discovered the entire prospect of Pocketpair’s acquisition to be very, most unlikely.
“Our CEO would by no means enable it,” he mentioned. “He’d by no means enable it. He’d by no means enable it. He would by no means, by no means enable it. He likes doing his personal factor and he likes being his personal boss. He does not like individuals telling him what to do.”
That’s fairly emphatic. Buckley continued:
“So I might be shocked. Perhaps when he is previous, and he would possibly simply promote it off for cash. And that might be unhappy, however in my lifetime, I in all probability will not see it. No, it’s going to be attention-grabbing to see the place the 2 paths go. We, Pocketpair, are clearly solely concerned in the place the sport path goes. Palworld as an IP, we’re concerned, however it’s very a lot within the fingers of Aniplex and Sony Music who’re steering that ship proper now. We’re simply providing our recommendation and ideas as they take that.”
Buckley and I additionally spoke concerning the risk of Palworld coming to the Nintendo Change 2, the studio’s response to the sport being referred to as “Pokemon with weapons”, and way more in our interview. You possibly can learn the complete dialogue proper right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Yow will discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Bought a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.