Around a year ago the Pokémon Company — an organization closely associated with Nintendo — filed a patent-infringement suit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. That legal dispute hasn’t stopped the studio from progressing the survival-and-creature-collection hybrid; the team has now set a target window for the game’s 1.0 release.
Global community manager John “Bucky” Buckley explains the studio’s plans in a new video: “Things are going to be a little different from here on out, and we want to take this chance to explain why – but don’t worry, it’s not bad news.” In short, it’s promising — despite the ongoing legal issues, Palworld is approaching its 1.0 launch.
That caution hasn’t stopped the team from setting a tentative timeframe. “Our goal is to ultimately release Palworld next year in 2026,” Bucky continues. “It means that things will be a little quiet from us for the rest of this year. It also means our winter update won’t be as big as Feybreak was.” Still, Palworld won’t go silent — Pocketpair says it has “a few surprises planned for our winter update this year.”
Bucky emphasizes the studio’s desire for openness about the project’s direction and assures fans that development isn’t “slowing down or scaling back” — if anything, it’s accelerating toward 1.0. “Palworld 1.0 will be a major milestone for us,” he says, adding that the team has “a truly massive amount of content planned for the 1.0 update.”
Pocketpair insists it won’t rush the release. “Rather than rushing it, we believe that laying the right foundation now will lead to a better game in the end.” The devs still plan to share teasers for Palworld 1.0 “in the very near future,” and Bucky hints the company is exploring additional projects too. He can’t reveal much yet, but as Pocketpair expands, it continues to prototype other game ideas.
For the moment, the studio’s primary attention remains on Palworld, while several smaller teams quietly develop concepts that could become new games. Let’s hope those experiments pay off — and that Palworld’s 1.0 launch arrives sooner rather than later.
Source: gamesradar.com
