Pocketpair after Palworld: what the studio has shipped since

Pocketpair is easy to define as the Palworld developer, but a look at the studio's output since 2024 shows a company trying to become something bigger than one title. Founded in April 2015 by Takuro Mizobe, a former JPMorgan engineer who went on to found the crypto exchange Coincheck before turning to games, Pocketpair remains privately held with Mizobe as its sole owner. The Tokyo-based studio lists roughly 98 employees on its own recruitment page, up from the smaller team of around 55 that was widely reported when Palworld first broke through in early 2024.

That growth tracks almost exactly with Palworld's own trajectory. The game entered early access in January 2024, reportedly reached tens of millions of players within its first year, and finally exited early access with a full 1.0 release on July 10, 2026. Mizobe has said the game's total development budget came in under 1 billion, or roughly $6.7 million, a modest figure next to what it eventually returned.

What the sales figures actually show

Pocketpair has publicly disclosed major milestones for Palworld sales, although the studio does not regularly publish a full breakdown of copies sold or revenue. Pocketpair disclosed that Palworld had surpassed 40 million players around the game's 1.0 launch, a figure that includes players across its available platforms and access models. The milestone is a player-count figure rather than a disclosed sales or revenue total, so it should not be treated as a direct measure of copies sold or gross income.

The studio's release history, including its smaller projects between Palworld's early-access launch and 1.0 release, helps show how Pocketpair's output expanded beyond its flagship game. Pocketpair's release history shows a studio that kept shipping smaller projects even while the bulk of its attention stayed on Palworld's long road to 1.0, and that pattern is worth tracing on its own terms rather than as a footnote to one game's sales figures.

Betting on other developers, not just Palworld

The studio has also moved into publishing other developers' work. Pocketpair Publishing, launched in January 2025, was pitched as a way to funnel Palworld's earnings into funding and distribution support for smaller teams. Its first signed project was a horror game from UK studio Surgent Studios, the team behind Tales of Kenzera: Zau, and the label has since backed additional titles including Truckful, a car-delivery adventure from Polish developer MythicOwl, and Vision Quench, a co-op dark fantasy shooter. None of these titles carry Palworld's name or aesthetic, which suggests the label is functioning as a genuine investment arm rather than a merchandising exercise.

Not everything on the roadmap has moved as quickly as Palworld did. Craftopia, Pocketpair's earlier survival-crafting game, has been in early access since 2019, and the studio confirmed in early September 2026 that its own 1.0 launch has slipped to 2027. The delay was framed candidly, with the developers acknowledging that communication around the game had lagged even as resources shifted toward finishing Palworld. It's a reminder that Pocketpair's growth hasn't been evenly distributed across its catalog.

Where the studio is placing its bets next

The most ambitious near-term expansion is Palworld Online, a mobile MMO announced in August 2026 through a licensing deal with Garena, the publisher behind Free Fire. Under the arrangement, Garena is handling development and live operations for the mobile version while Pocketpair retains creative oversight of the IP, a structure that lets the smaller studio extend its reach into a market it likely couldn't service alone.

Even with 1.0 behind it, Pocketpair hasn't treated Palworld as finished. Comms and publishing lead John Buckley said in early September 2026 that a 1.1 update was in the works, describing the 1.0 release itself as more of a "soft prologue" than an endpoint, with further content changes planned in response to player feedback gathered since launch.

Taken together, the last two and a half years look less like a single hit being milked for follow-on content and more like a studio using one game's revenue to build several things at once: a card game, a mobile spin-off, a farming sim, and a publishing arm supporting outside developers. Whether that bet pays off the way Palworld itself did remains an open question, and one that will depend on titles that, unlike Palworld, haven't yet found their audience.

COMTEX_492299602/2891/2026-09-09T02:38:00

You May Also Be Interested In

• Micron offers Taiwan workers up to 68-month bonuses as strike threat looms
• HdL Companies Names Chief Financial Officer Richard Park as President
• Tuckers Cove Waterpark-Inspired Amenities Now Open to Residents at Babcock Ranch