/ The PlayStation version of Palworld has launched in most countries, but not Japan where Nintendo is suing the game’s developer for patent infringement.
By Richard Lawler, a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.
Sep 25, 2024, 12:36 AM UTC
Palworld Screenshot: PlayStation (YouTube)
Sony included the PS5 launch of Palworld as one of its news items during Tuesday evening’s State of Play presentation, but it left out a detail. While the game has launched on PlayStation platforms in 68 countries and regions worldwide, Japan is not one of them.
The official Japanese account for the game said on X, according to machine translation, that the release date in Japan “has not yet been decided,” without going into detail about the reason. It certainly seems like a reason could be the patent infringement lawsuit Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair last week, but the tweet didn’t confirm things either way.
We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.
At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.
