

Yep, and massive game budgets lead to needing lots of customers to offset the costs which leads to sanding off everything that stands out for “broad market appeal” which leads to “a game for everyone is a game for no one.”
The lesson? If making a AAA game without creative risk and without an exploitative funding model is too much of a financial risk for your studio, don’t make AAA games.








Yeah, it would still be a great game in a universe where Pokemon doesn’t exist. The devs are very open about using established game mechanics, and those are established for a reason.
The closest game to Palworld is probably Ark, being another open-world creature collector, survival crafter combination. However, on top of all the significant aesthetic and QOL changes, Palworld still has a much deeper colony management and creature interaction and optimization angle to still make it quite unique mechanically.