Featured Image Credit: Pocketpair
Pokémon is one of the largest franchises on Earth but like David Vs Goliath, more and more rival games have been popping up over the years to try their luck at dethroning it.
These attempts to become the very best like no one ever was have been especially admirable as despite Nintendo’s interference with lawsuits and patents, the competition just keeps coming.
Palworld is by far the best example of this as gamers were quick to compare it to Pokémon when it was first announced and Nintendo quickly moved to take it down. Palworld is still standing though and it looks like the creature catching and battling game is about to become a full-scale MMO.
As reported by Gematsu, Palworld’s developer and publisher Pocketpair recently filed for a new trademark in South Korea and the United States.
The trademark was for something called Palworld Online which sounds an awful lot like an MMO.
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It’s worth pointing out that Palworld does currently support online play, but only with a maximum of 32 players in online servers whereas an MMO could potentially support hundreds.
Honestly it feels like a no-brainer as Palworld is all about exploration, building bases and battling creatures so it’d suit a large-scale multiplayer experience quite well.
Whether there are actual plans to release a spin-off MMO though remains to be seen as nothing has been announced just yet. Palworld Online could turn out to be a free expansion too, simply increasing the number of players you can have in your game at any given time.
If a standalone MMO is in the works, it’d be a huge development for the rivalry between Palworld and Pokémon.
The next Pokémon game set to release is Pokémon Winds And Waves which we had prior knowledge of thanks to a massive data breach at Game Freak in 2024.
Also noted amongst the leaks was a new Pokémon Legends game, in addition to a secret project known internally as Seed. This is believed to be a Pokémon MMO project currently in Game Freak’s pipeline.
Seed appears to be several years away from release though so if Palworld is indeed working on an MMO at the moment, there’s a good chance it’ll release before Pokémon has a crack at it. Suddenly the tables would turn and it would look like Pokémon is copying Palworld rather than the other way around.
That’s not to say there will be any real competition between the two though. Palworld certainly has its fans but Pokémon has many, many more.
The latter is also finally embracing new-gen hardware as Pokémon Winds And Waves will be a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, meaning we might finally get a Pokémon game with graphics all players can appreciate rather than the dull, flat textures and lifeless models we’ve had so far.
Pokémon is still the king of critter catching games but it’s nice to see Palworld is still kicking, and more content could be on the way in the form of a standalone release or a free update.
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