Pocketpair, developer of smash hit Palworld, isn’t letting anything stop it from trying to expand the game’s reach, not even a lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. A few weeks ago, the game appeared at Sony’s State of Play event to reveal that it’s coming to the PlayStation 5 for territories outside of Japan. Now, Pocketpair is partnering with PUBG: Battleground’s publisher, Krafton and PUBG Studios to bring the game to mobile devices.
PUBG Studios will be handling the development as it has a successful track record of translating console and PC based games over to mobile platforms. In a statement about this partnership, Krafton said that it “plans to faithfully reinterpret and implement the original’s main fun elements to fit the mobile environment.”
This partnership makes perfect sense because Palworld has become incredibly popular in China, where mobile gaming makes up the vast majority of the market. Having a mobile version of an IP that’s now as popular as Palworld could mean a serious monetary windfall for both Krafton and Pocketpair.
However, this could all be upended by the lawsuit looming over Pocketpair. Unfortunately, there still isn’t enough information to determine what kind of an impact it might have on this newly announced mobile version. The fact that Palworld isn’t able to release in Japan on the PlayStation 5 makes it seem as if Nintendo might have the upper hand in their legal battle.
An interesting possibility is that Pocketpair views this as an opportunity to reset Palworld. With the premise that the move to mobile devices necessitates reworking the game’s elements in a way that enables the company to address whatever issues Nintendo is claiming in its lawsuit. Time will tell how this all shakes out for the monsters with guns game.