Last summer, Palworld developer Pocketpair signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment to produce merchandise, music, and other products around Palworld. Though the deal was simply a business agreement to expand the Palworld universe outside of games, a number of fans mistook it for a sign that an acquisition was on the horizon. Especially after rumors earlier in the year that Pocketpair was in talks with Microsoft for that very reason.
All that acquisition talk wasn’t true at the time, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe later confirmed, but it sure did get conversation started. Since then, a number of fans have speculated on a potential Pocketpair acquisition, especially in the wake of Microsoft seemingly acquiring half the AA industry in just a few years and allegedly courting Japanese developers, and Sony making several acquisitions of its own in response.
So will Pocketpair ever get acquired? Ultimately, it’s up to Mizobe, but when I asked communications director and publishing manager John ‘Bucky’ Buckley about it at the Game Developers Conference last month, he found the whole prospect of Pocketpair’s acquisition to be very, very unlikely.
“Our CEO would never allow it,” he said. “He'd never allow it. He'd never allow it. He would never, never allow it. He likes doing his own thing and he likes being his own boss. He doesn't like people telling him what to do.”
That’s pretty emphatic. Buckley continued:
“So I would be shocked. Maybe when he's old, and he might just sell it off for money. And that would be sad, but in my lifetime, I probably won't see it. No, it'll be interesting to see where the two paths go. We, Pocketpair, are obviously only involved in where the game path is going. Palworld as an IP, we are involved, but it’s very much in the hands of Aniplex and Sony Music who are steering that ship right now. We are just offering our advice and thoughts as they take that.”
Buckley and I also spoke about the possibility of Palworld coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, the studio’s reaction to the game being called “Pokemon with guns”, and much more in our interview. You can read the full discussion right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
