Random: Japanese Celebs Reportedly Told "Not To Mention" Palworld To Avoid Damaging Pokémon Relations

I’m sure someone is going to grab a pitchfork over this but TPC and Nintendo didn’t tell them to do this. They just have enough sense not to step in a mess. Or mess up potential revenue streams. Pretty logical really.

Nintendo Life has a Palworld obsession

Given Mon games are a dime a dozen anyway I have no idea why people are so obsessed with crowing about this one and the similarities to Pokemon. There is obvious inspiration going on, sure, 100%, but it feels like such a nontroversy that should've passed in a day and has been dragged out for weeks at this point.

Maybe you should take the same advice NL.

Another article about the game that you can’t play on a Nintendo system. This is getting real old.

Lol palworld doesn't need celebrities.
Sony is also busy, trying to get the game on their console, fans where begging Sony for it.
Been having many hours in this. It only gets better and better. And the fast support and Fixes they have for bugs (even in beta) is amazing.

I dont understand the worship Japanese people have for companies like Pokemon when the companies themselves are there strictly for profit... Like oh my goodness digimon came out on the heels of Pokemon...was there a hushed reverence then about the so similar on the surface but not so much once you see they are different same with Palworld...if anything they should be proud that people want to imitate their work...even if it took forever...we play a million zelda likes and "Metroidvanias"...wheres the pitchforks for those? Palworld is fun... It won't stop me from playing Pokemon either...why don't they understand that we wanna play all the games we can..not just pick and choose one like they are NFL teams.. (soccer clubs?) And say no to the rest.. thats ludacrisy

Imagine Palworld on Switch 2 lmao

This is getting ridiculous. Reminds me of CoD situation when Kratos VA told a joke about his speech being longer than the last CoD which apparently didnt sit well with Activision. Imagine making a borderline scam game, getting away with it legally, and having the audacity to get offended when called out.

Pokemon got away with terrible technical state of S/V and now everyone has to walk on eggshells around them because someone made a more appealing game.

What a world.

What kind of controversy is this even supposed to be.

It's actually outdoing Pokémon in terms of players now. Well then.

They need a wake-up call anyways. I'm rooting for Palworld to be even more successful.

So strange to me that of all things to use as a protest against Game Freak's "laziness" and lack of polish, people are using an unfinished, uninspired, patchwork of industry trend-chasing, early access game. I'm sure Game Freak will hear you loud and clear, they should just sell the game without finishing it next time.

@RavenDuroi Pocket Pair is a self-publishing indie developer on their fifth game and Pokemon is the biggest media franchise in the world. Of course one can get away with jank and early access issues that the other shouldn't be allowed to, it's kind to crazy to act like they should be expected to be equivalent.

Blackmailed by Pokemon lol

That's pretty pathetic, for the agency or nintendo if they're really don't want to collaborate with someone that mention palworld lol.

Thats one way to boost the Streisand effect.

@HotGoomba
I would soo love that, a day one from me. Would double dip in an instance.

Oh good, there hasn't been a article about this Xbox exclusive on this Nintendo site for almost 17 hours. Palworldlife!

Palworld may be selling a lot but that is only natural due to the targeted audience it has. Palworld's demographic is different to Pokémon by a vast majority since one game is targeting the general audience with their main focus on child friendly while the other game is aiming at the mature audience with older teen and adults players in mind. They are both completely different and I think people are either forgetting that fact or choose to ignore it because the debate of which game is better or is superior really holds no merit in this case. This entire debacle with Palworld & Pokémon is very dumb in the grand scheme of things and I which people would move and get over it already.

Honestly I could care less about the multi million franchise having some designs snatched. I'm just dissapointed about how directionless and iffy the game feels. The artstyles and narratives clash horrendously, it doesn't feel like a passion game inspired by Pokemon. It feels like a cobbled together generic crafting game with the minecraft pixelmon mod. It's just so... empty? Void of any real desire from the director or devs to get what they want done, rather, mashing together whatever is selling well at the moment. This game was not made with gameplay or story in mind, but solely for reactions and comparisons and curiosity-buys rather than actual drive to play the game. It stinks that so much time went into this sad sack. Yo Kai Watch and DragonQuest Monsters are games people should take inspiration from, those are good Pokemon-inspired games

Half the population don't object to being served food in a bucket (what next, the KFC trough!?) I don't care how popular it is. This simply doesn't capture my imagination at all so I'll do me. Hmm...imagine if someone made a Fifa with guns! It would be the best UK game of all time!

@GrailUK
You never played Cannon Soccer? Sensible did a crossover of Sensi Soccer with Cannon Fodder
https://youtu.be/AdrzrdASh3g?feature=shared

(That KFC advert is one of the best, unintentionally - "Wanna meet my parents? We're gonna eat dinner out of a bucket")

It’s funny because Palworld and Pokemon fans support the game THAT much so TPC and GF can get their ***** together and deliver a good game. Hey I enjoyed S&V but I appreciate the wake up call they are getting.

It’s about time

@Rambler No lol. Looks a bit light on the football! Nice Christmas message though

I mean, isn't this the standard business practice?
Plus they've got a lot of experiences like that, Palworld isn't the first game to "fight" against Pokemon and it won't be the last.
Digimon, Monster Rancher, Medabots, Yokai Watch, SMT, plus a lot of other games that, lets be honest, had way much more of a backing both inside and outside Japan than Palworld has.
Why burn future collabs with an established franchise over getting some quick money with some flavor of the month game that has yet to prove it wasn't some one hit wonder?

Pokemon copies Dragon Quest, isn't it?

TPC and Game Freak are sooo salty and I absolutely love it. Maybe we'll get some fragments of quality back from them after this.

exposing the bias for pokemon

@RavenDuroi

"they should just sell the game without finishing it next time."

So no change then.

I love how this even needs to be said in the first place by anyone. Nintendo is a company run by man children.

The Pokemon Palworld issue is a lose lose for me.

I don't like Palwolrd and the crude approach they took with how you can treat your pals. But I also can't stand Gamefreak for apparently being too cheap to hire the needed staff to make an actually good game.

Then there's Nintendo probably ready to sue people even named Mario. lol

@BLD I don't think there's any excuse for the performance issues of Scarlet and Violet, but suggesting they didn't otherwise release with a full storyline and finished gameplay features is pretty ridiculous.

I'm not too surprised by this, as others have said these companies are taking a cautious stance on the controversy surrounding both games.

That said, it's not really stopping Japanese influencers from talking about the game and/or streaming it.

@RavenDuroi Palworld kind of gets a pass here because of its early access nature, some of the technical funkiness that people reported on when the game first dropped has actually been fixed and PocketPair has also released a roadmap for the game showing what they plan on introducing into the game.

Pokemon gets harsher criticism because they're essentially "finished" at launch but still have issues that should've been fixed before release. Do you really want more nonsense like BDSP's Day 1 patch adding in stuff that should've been in the base game and SV's terrible performance that only got worse once The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk dropped? And this isn't even dipping into the well of wishful thinking that the fanbase has built regarding new and returning features they'd like to see in future games.

We don't talk about pal worl worl world.

Why all the articles about Palworld? It's not even on Switch.

I know that gaming news in general isn't particularly plentiful in the first month or so of the year, but articles like this aren't only irrelevant to a Nintendo fansite, they just invite Pokemon/Palworld tribalism and arguing in the comments...

@imadeanaccount Everyone here grew upwith SEGA, wished Sonic was more popular than Mario and secretly wishes Nintendo would go third party so their beloved SEGA doesn't seem so bad.

(erm, hope everyone realises that was sarcasm!)

I really wish some would actually read the articles before commenting 😔.

Maybe it's best to eventually try the game out myself, seeing as there's really no consensus on whether or not TPC/GF should even care, outside the debate on character designs. One minute, the game is nothing like Pokèmon. The next, TPC should be concerned. So which is it?

You know how to get back at Palworld? Make a better game!

@MysticX You have your answer right in the tags, it's because of the Pokémon side of the issue that these talent agencies are leaning on. The same thing happened when TPC released that statement regarding Palworld too.

@UmbreonsPapa The issue of Palworld not being anything like Pokémon and TPC/GF being concerned about Palworld are technically two different kettles of fish.

The first part comes down to the game style, Pokémon is still an RPG whilst Palworld incorporates several RPG elements (the game is basically an MMORPG with the option to play it as a single-player game) whilst also combining aspects of survival/crafting elements and third-person shooters. There's also the issue of target demographics that most people tend to not touch on for some weird reason.

The second issue boils down to the issues that have plagued Pokémon games in recent years and how many players Palworld has gathered in the two weeks since its release.

Pokémon games have has many performance and graphical issues since the main line games have dropped on Switch (with some people, myself included, arguing that it's had these issues since the games moved onto the 3DS and switched from a largely 2D game to a 3D game) compared to other games released on the console, SV is probably the worst offender I've seen since XY/ORAS's Horde Battles. And yes, TPC has said that they plan on trying to fix this in future titles but it's kind of pointless if they can't even address the issue in their currently-relevant titles that'll more than likely still be somewhat relevant for 2-3 more years.

Compared to that, Palworld has some weird quirks but it looks beautiful (in part due to the game being developed in UE5 rather than Unity or a homemade engine) and plays well despite the game being in early access. And as far as glitches and bugs go the developers are actively paying attention to what people mention on social media and report to them via an in-game bug report feature.

Sales and players are a bit more difficult to pin down. Pokémon's numbers are funky since sales numbers aren't reported often but SV sold over 10 million copies in three days reached 23.23 million sales by September 2023 (SWSH sold more than 6 million during its opening weekend and 26.02 million copies by September 2023). By contrast Palworld managed to get 19 million players by the end of January (12 million from Steam and 7 million from Games Pass). Palworld's numbers exactly close to Pokémon's but for it to reach ~82% of SV's sales as of September 2023 (or ~73% of SWSH's sales as of September 2023) in just two weeks whilst also not trying to reach out to the same demographic Pokémon does is really impressive.

As far as trying it out I'd recommend it, if you're a fan of games like ARK: Survival Evolved (or even Minecraft's Survival Mode with a Pokémon-related mod like Cobblemon) then it's worth looking into.

@ZebZed I appreciate your detailed post. It sort of answers why Palworld isn't anything like Pokèmon. But it doesn't really answer why TPC needs to be concerned about the game. If this were, for example, Yo-kai Watch in Palworld's position, I can understand the comparison or the need to put The Pokèmon Company on notice. They're similar games.

Outside of Palworld having Pokèmon type creatures, I still don't see how it's competing in the same sphere of a type of game (outside of a few similar elements they might share). I guess that's where my confusion about the discourse about the comparison comes in and how genuine some of it really is. Again, there's a group of those who have played the game that have stated it's nothing like Pokèmon outside of aesthetics and maybe the idea of capturing creatures. But then there are those who absolutely think it's a Pokèmon killer. So I guess that's why I'm asking which is it?

its nor that surprising, with so much controversy surrounding it agencies would expect it to impact the image of anyone who endorses

This is definitely antitrust behavior…underganded and dirty. Not a good look big N. I’m a fan but noy a good look.

let's face it, if Nintendo feels bothered by Palworld, that's a good thing. means they'll have to make their games better. Pokemon never really had serious competition.

@RavenDuroi Well, that would be cool actually. Gamefreak should start to be more transparent and sell their games as what they are, unpolished early access games.

This game is really fun, and it would be nice to have it on Switch 2. I have played it a bit on my Rog Ally, and it's great to play in handheld.

@RavenDuroi the funny thing is the fact that you're right. Plaworld is an early access game that is unfinished and uninspired. The reason why people are using it though... is because it's somehow refreshing. This melting pot of ideas somehow becomes its own thing. It also helps that the game is only 30 bucks, they aren't stingy and released 2 different versions for no other reason than greed, and it doesn't run at 10 FPS. The fact that people are calling out Scarlet and Violet because an early access game is more enjoyable AND runs better is actually laughable and shows how bad scarlet and violet are. This is coming from someone who actually played scarlet for 40 hours or so too. Calling a game complete with such serious performance issues doesn't feel right to me. There was clearly more work to be done.

No idea why this Nintendo site is obsessed over reporting a non Nintendo game. There are plenty of Pokemon clones that don’t exist on Nintendo platforms, but for some reason the writers want to talk about this hoping this stirs something up here. Slow news day for them I guess.

Anyway I don’t see this “putting Pokemon on check” like all the clones tried in the past. Yokai watch was the closest one to do this when it was getting sales in Japan comparable to Pokemon, but they have long since fell from grace.

People need to realize half the reason Pokemon is big as it is wasn’t because it was an overnight sensation off one game, but they KEPT being a popular franchise for decades over multiple mediums.

@Lizuka Yeah the “controversy” side of things is blown out of proportion. Gameplay wise though I can tell how it got popular. I have the game on steam deck and honestly the closest gameplay mechanic to Pokemon is catching them. It actually has a lot more survival game aspects than anything else, and it’s surprisingly really fun and unique!

I think it sounds more like pokemon guards are doing the pot stirring and GameFreak isn't doing anything that royals them. The mear fact GF/Ninja didn't kill Palword tells alot if there intended to do it from the get go. I think this is fan caused not GF/Ninja caused fabricated issues.

@Lizuka No game that has a budget over 1 million dollars should be considered an indie game.

Move on with your life, NintendoLife...the constant Palworld articles are just getting sad.

@GrailUK Grand Theft FIFA? I think that would shut down the UK.

Edit:TYPO TYPO!!!!