Palworld Dev And Sony Are Teaming Up

Palworld developer Pocketpair has announced a new company called Palworld Entertainment Inc., a joint venture with Sony Music Entertainment to “expand and develop new businesses” related to the popular Pokemon-with-guns game.

In a press release, the companies said the aim of the joint venture is to expand the “commercial business endeavors” of Palworld, including merchandising efforts.

Pocketpair also announced that Palworld merchandise will be sold through the Aniplex Online store, with a product lineup to be announced later. The merch will debut and be sold for the first time at Pocketpair’s booth at the Bilibili World 2024 event this weekend in Shanghai, China.

Some are saying Palworld Entertainment may be similar to The Pokemon Company, which is the overarching parent company of the Pokemon series that handles its major franchise extensions from merchandise to movies.

The game is inspired by Pokemon, and its massive success led The Pokemon Company to announce in January that it was investigating Palworld. Nintendo never mentioned Palworld by name, though, and nothing ever came of this, at least nothing that was made public. The game also faced accusations of plagiarism. People sent death threats to the game’s developers over this, prompting the studio’s CEO to ask people to stop harassing the team’s workers.

Palworld released in January for PC and Xbox, quickly become a huge success thanks in part to its availability through Xbox Game Pass. The game quickly reached 25 million players. The game has seen an uptick in popularity since its latest major update came out in June.