The Card Priest

THERE’S ANOTHER COMPANY BEHIND THE EXPANSION OF PALWORLD THAT PEOPLE ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO. I’ve spent the past few weeks researching Pocketpair, Bushiroad and basically anything Palworld, but there’s one company in the shadows, Palworld Entertainment. (keep the timeline in mind here) Palworld launched in January 2024. Just six months later, Pocketpair joined Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Aniplex to establish Palworld Entertainment, a joint venture created to handle licensing, merchandising and expanding Palworld outside the core game. (this is where things get interesting) Aniplex is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan, yet SMEJ and Aniplex both participated alongside Pocketpair in creating Palworld Entertainment. Aniplex’s business spans anime, games, music and video, character licensing and international entertainment. Then you move through Sony’s entertainment ecosystem and arrive at another interesting name: Crunchyroll. Sony’s anime businesses include Crunchyroll, operated through a joint venture, with guess who? Aniplex and Sony Pictures. (now before someone runs with that, there is no confirmed palworld anime that I’m aware of. I’m not saying crunchyroll is making one or aniplex secretly greenlit one. im saying it’s worth understanding the infrastructure pocketpair has relationships with) Aniplex has anime and character expertise. Sony Music has music and entertainment infrastructure. The wider Sony ecosystem has global anime distribution through Crunchyroll. Bushiroad brings trading cards, collectibles, events and organized play. Pocketpair brings the IP. (do you see where this is going?) Now imagine Palworld eventually gets an anime. Who produces it? Who handles the soundtrack? Who distributes it internationally? None of that is confirmed, but Pocketpair doesn’t necessarily have to build the infrastructure to do any of it from scratch. And this connects directly back to the TCG. The Palworld TCG doesn’t have to carry the entire IP. Someone can discover Palworld through the survival game. Someone else through Palfarm. Someone might only care about the TCG. Someone might buy a merchandise without ever playing the game. And someday, if it happens, someone could discover Palworld through an anime. Different doors into the same character ecosystem. (this is basically the question i’ve been trying to answer. can palworld become bigger than the game that created it?) That’s why the timing gets me. January 2024: Palworld launches. July 2024: Palworld Entertainment is established. Within six months, Pocketpair was already sitting at the table with Aniplex and Sony Music Entertainment Japan figuring out what these characters could become outside a videogame. July 2026: Palworld 1.0 is released. July 2026: Palworld TCG is released. August 2026: Palworld Mobile is announced. Now we’re seeing the pieces appear: the TCG, figures, Palworld Mobile, collaborations, licensed products and games targeting completely different demographics. (i’m starting to understand how they’re giving themselves a chance to become something much bigger than a survival game) Maybe that’s why Palworld Entertainment is worth watching. Not just because of what they’ve announced, but because of who Pocketpair put in the room before they knew how big this thing could become. (now imagine what this could look like a few years from now if all these pieces actually fall into place. insane)