Palworld’s Latest Announcement Is a Harsh Reminder Fans Still Haven’t Gotten the Pokemon Game They’ve Wanted for Decades
Pokemon has spent decades building one of the biggest creature-collecting franchises in gaming, yet its core formula has remained remarkably consistent. Players receive a new region, a new collection of monsters, a new rival, and another journey toward becoming Champion. The worlds have grown larger, and recent entries have introduced online multiplayer, but the fundamental experience remains centered on the traditional single-player adventure. There is nothing wrong with that formula, and I love that we get consistent releases. Pokemon is still one of gaming’s most recognizable franchises. But after so many years, it is difficult not to wonder what Pokemon could become if Nintendo and The Pokemon Company took the series in a radically different direction.
That question has become even more frustrating with the announcement of Palworld Online, a mobile MMO coming to iOS and Android in 2026. Developed and published by Garena under an official license, the game will feature a seamless open world, creature collection, multiplayer activities, PvE and PvP, and an original story. For fans hoping Palworld might eventually become the online monster-catching experience they had imagined, making its MMO direction a mobile-exclusive project has taken much of the excitement out of the announcement. Yet it also highlights something that has bothered Pokemon fans for decades: other games keep experimenting with the online monster-catching formula while the world’s biggest monster franchise still has not fully embraced it.
Pokemon & the Monster-Collecting Genre Has Never Fully Embraced Online Worlds
There have been attempts to give players the online monster-catching adventure they want. Temtem is probably the clearest modern example. Developed by Crema, it launched as an online creature-collection adventure built around catching monsters, battling other tamers, trading, exploration, and multiplayer interaction. It even carries the MMORPG label on Steam. It is a legitimate attempt at answering a question that Pokemon has never really answered: what would happen if catching creatures and traveling through a monster-filled world were designed around an online community from the beginning?
The problem is that competing monster-catching games do not have the same cultural force as Pokemon. Temtem can offer an online world, but it cannot replicate the decades of history, characters, creatures, and global recognition behind Nintendo’s franchise. That difference matters. Fans are not simply asking for another monster-catching MMO. They want to experience the Pokemon world with other players. There is already evidence that Nintendo understands players want online interaction. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet allow up to four players to explore together, while also supporting trading, battles, and Tera Raid Battles. The missing piece is a persistent world built around that idea.
That distinction is important because an MMO would not necessarily have to replace the traditional games. Final Fantasy XIV demonstrates how an established franchise can build a massive online RPG without eliminating the rest of the series. Square Enix describes Final Fantasy XIV as an MMORPG, and the game continues to exist as its own ongoing branch of the larger Final Fantasy franchise. The Elder Scrolls Online similarly transformed Bethesda’s fantasy universe into an MMORPG while The Elder Scrolls could continue as a separate single-player series. There is no reason Pokemon could not pursue the same strategy.
Palworld’s Mobile Direction Makes Its MMO Future Harder to Get Excited About
The Palworld Online announcement should have been an easy reason to get excited. Palworld already demonstrated that players are interested in a creature-collecting game that combines exploration, survival, crafting, and multiplayer. Turning those ideas into a persistent online world sounds like a natural upgrade. Instead, the reveal immediately came with a major limitation: this particular MMO is being designed exclusively for mobile devices. Garena’s game is separate from the mobile project being developed by Krafton and PUBG Studios, making the announcement even more confusing for fans trying to understand where Palworld is heading.
That does not automatically make Palworld Online a bad game. The announced features are substantial, including an interconnected world, creature collection, multiplayer progression, PvE and PvP. After years of players imagining a massive Palworld world where friends could build bases, explore together and interact with hundreds of creatures, a mobile MMO can feel like a very different answer to that fantasy. The mobile market also brings its own expectations and design considerations, which makes it harder to view this as the definitive online future many fans wanted from Palworld.
That makes the announcement more frustrating for Pokemon fans than Palworld fans. Here is another monster-collecting property experimenting with the MMO concept while Nintendo continues to keep its flagship franchise focused on the established formula. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet proved that the series can support players exploring the same region together, but those features still exist within the framework of a traditional Pokemon RPG. The idea of taking that foundation and expanding it into a persistent world with towns full of players, player-run activities, large-scale battles, and constantly evolving regions still feels strangely absent from the official franchise.
Nintendo Still Hasn’t Given Fans the Online Pokémon Adventure They Want
This is where the latest Palworld announcement becomes a reminder rather than simply another piece of gaming news. For years, fans have imagined what a Pokemon MMO could look like. Imagine starting in a shared region, encountering other trainers while traveling between towns, forming groups to battle powerful wild Pokemon, trading creatures in bustling cities, and eventually joining larger competitive events. The basic ingredients already exist throughout the franchise. What has never happened is putting those ingredients into a persistent online world designed around the idea from the start.
Nintendo has certainly expanded Pokemon online over the years. Trading and battling have been central to the series since its earliest days, while modern games have added online exploration and cooperative activities. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet allow players to explore Paldea with friends and participate in Tera Raid Battles, showing that the franchise can incorporate shared-world elements without abandoning its traditional structure. But there remains a substantial difference between allowing several players to explore together and building a genuine MMO. One is an online feature. The other is an entire game built around an ongoing community.
That is why Palworld Online is such a harsh reminder of what Pokemon still lacks. Other franchises have proven that an online spin-off can coexist with traditional releases, and creature-collecting developers have already demonstrated that there is an audience for persistent online worlds. Temtem showed that monster catching can be designed around multiplayer from the ground up, while Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online demonstrate how established franchises can support massive online worlds alongside their other games. Pokemon does not need to abandon the games fans already love. It simply needs to finally give those fans the online adventure they have been asking for.
