The good folks at Pocketpair, the Tokyo-based studio behind Palworld, finally had time to take a seat, prioritize, and plan ahead, as their games blows up to become a much larger success than anyone imagined.
Pocketpair is promising a swath of improvements coming to Palworld. The only catch? They’re not top priority. Instead, the focus is on addressing all the bugs that have been reported after several millions played Palworld in the last week, and the fixes could mean anything from rolling back already implemented changes, fix the loading screen issues, and improving on the performance discrepancy between the Xbox and Steam versions.
Once all the fuss is done and over with, Pocketpair says it will then be all eyes on expanding Palworld and adding a list of features that’s more like a checklist of everything that fans have asked them to implement in the game than a roadmap.
[The Future of Palworld]
We would like to share with you our roadmap for Palworld.
Sales have far exceeded the development team's expectations, and we are currently experiencing many problems due to excessive access congestion, among other challenges.
We will prioritize… pic.twitter.com/UKD2HFRaG4— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) January 24, 2024
Pocketpair candidly admitted that it didn’t expect Palworld to get so big so quickly, adding that the studio is “currently experiencing many problems due to excessive access congestion.
It’s unclear when the fixes are coming and when the new content will be added to Palworld. However, they are planning to implement things “ASAP”, with future updates including the following:
- PvP
- Raid Bosses (End-Game Content)
- Pal Arena (PvP for Pals)
- Steam-Xbox Crossplay
- Various Xbox Feature Improvements
- Server Transfers and Migrations
- Improvements to the Building System
- New islands, Pals, Bosses, and technologies
Pocketpair appears to have planned many steps ahead. Their initial roadmap looks like something from a game already out in public, not an Early Access title, and it’s a testament to Pocketpair’s dedication that it already has its eyes set on what’s next once the critical fixes are implemented.
Just don’t expect this overly ambitious roadmap to hold, especially if Palworld continues on with its upward trajectory. Even if Pocketpair somehow finds enough hands to help with Palworld’s development, its unprecedented growth means that the studio will find its hands full more often than not. This will likely lead to a lengthy delay of its roadmap as Pocketpair discovers that the game has more bugs than expected.
Pocketpair’s roadmap reaffirms that it’s heavily invested in the Xbox ecosystem, promising improvements to its performance and gameplay on the platform, as well as cross-play. The Xbox version remains the worst port, including being inferior to the versions sold on the Microsoft Store and the port on PC Game Pass.
Palworld is currently the third-fastest-selling video game of all time, with a chance to make over $1 billion in revenue in two weeks.
