Palworld Has Created the Perfect Storm!

I don’t know whether to be surprised anymore by these stories or to expect them at this point...but here we are again.

Palworld, the Pokemon look-alike with enough firepower to assemble a small army, has just surpassed 5 million copies sold within its first weekend!

And it doesn’t stop there!

So how did we get to this point? Some people would probably say that it’s all just luck and that a game that is in Early Access, which means that it is still being developed, received this type of publicity out of sheer happenstance. As that might have been true because the virality of content nowadays could have, legitimately, blown this game up to levels of fandom that the studio couldn’t even dream of, but I think there is more to this than meets the eye. No game just sells over 5 million copies in its first weekend on dumb luck. To put that into perspective, at a price of $29.99 (and taking into account 30% being taken by Steam who is the indirect channel of distribution in this case), Pocketpair, the developer and publisher of Palworld, just received $105 million in a single week! That’s not luck... that’s genius.

So let’s find out their marketing mix and figure out what created this colossal storm to brew.

First, the product and price.

Palworld is an open-world survival RPG with gameplay mechanics that are very similar to Pokemon. If those aren’t trigger words, I don’t know what is. Open-world survival games are all the rage nowadays with the rise in popularity of a couple of popular games in particular, but with one that stands out amongst the rest: LEGO Fortnite. As someone who did not believe in the hype when my brother told me about this game, I was extremely skeptical about playing LEGO Fortnite. That is until I started it and the gameplay loop sucked me in like water going down a drain. With a satisfying gameplay loop, alongside a great multiplayer experience, it is very possible that Pocketpair developed a product that satisfied player’s cravings for an immersive open-world survival RPG. Sprinkle some Pokemon mechanics (everyone loves Pokemon and, if you don’t, you’re a LIAR), and you have the makings of a viral video game.

However, Palworld has a crutch which, in hindsight, seems more like a positive feature than a negative one: Early Access. Games that are in early access on Steam are the developers way of saying, “This game is NOT the full version of the game and still has performance issues and bugs that need to be fixed.” In other words, Palworld is an ongoing project and, therefore, the price needs to reflect that fact. Therefore, instead of being priced at $59.99 which is what the average AAA game would be priced at, it’s at half the cost. That’s much more enticing, especially when gamers don’t have the highest expectations for the game since it’s still in early access.

But who says that early access games can’t be great games? If anything, it gives developers an opportunity to shine because some gamers may not have the highest expectations for the performance of the game. That’s when it’s important to have an incredible experience. A great gaming experience trumps performance any day of the week.

Now for the placement of Palworld which Pocketpair opted to sell on Steam instead of another gaming distribution channel such as GOG.com or the Epic Games Store. Why?

Three words: recurring active users. 132 million to be precise. If Palworld wanted to survive, pun intended, and if the developers have any chance of making some more money to continue developing their game, they needed to throw their net into the biggest pond and that pond had to

be Steam. As steep as a 30% of revenue may be, it was the only way that the studio would have been able to generate enough funding to continue developing their game and pay everyone working on the game.

But there is another reason why Steam was the perfect place to publish their game and it is the last point: Promotion. And, let me tell you:

You can’t buy this level of publicity.

This game is a phenomenon, an enigma at the highest level and Pocketpair has capitalized on the perfect storm when it comes to their marketing mix and it has paid off 100-fold. You can call it a Pokemon ripoff all you want, but you cannot deny that Pocketpair has positioned their brand perfectly to bring home the bacon. The only question now is: where do they take their game now? Needless to say, I’m excited! Let me know what you think!

As well, if you’re interested in our other articles, check this one out here where I talk about Xbox and how they DESPERATELY need to work on their branding...but don’t worry, there is one segment of the market that they can corner...