‘Palworld’ Could Become The Next No Man’s Sky If It Stays On Track - Forbes

What the report says

Forbes contributor Paul Tassi writes that Pocketpair’s Palworld appears to be settling into a long-term update strategy closer to No Man’s Sky than to Pokémon. The analysis follows the release of Palworld’s 1.0 update, which Forbes says brought the game to nearly one million concurrent players on Steam, below its earlier 2.1 million Steam peak but still unusually high. The article also notes that those figures do not include PlayStation 5 or Xbox Game Pass activity.

Tassi’s central point is not that Palworld needs the kind of comeback often associated with No Man’s Sky. Instead, he argues that the comparison is about business model and content cadence: Palworld charges an upfront price, cited by Forbes as $30, and continues to add free expansions, areas, creatures and requested features without seasons or microtransactions. Forbes contrasts that approach with live-service monetization and with Pokémon’s pattern of periodic new game releases.

The piece frames No Man’s Sky, developed by Hello Games, as the clearest precedent for this model: a game that kept expanding for years through free updates after purchase. Forbes says Palworld has already been following a similar path for about two and a half years, while emphasizing that Palworld did not begin from the same troubled launch reputation.

The significance, according to Forbes, is that Palworld may be able to sustain a long life if Pocketpair keeps adding substantial free content while avoiding heavier storefront or gacha-style monetization. The article presents this as an outlook rather than a confirmed plan or outcome.