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,

Surprise! Palworld, one of the biggest games of the year, has suddenly arrived on PS5. But its debut on the console comes just days after Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed a patent infringement suit against developer Pocketpair.

It's an odd omission since Palworld is available in Japan on both Xbox Series X and PC. Pocketpair also seems eager to make the Japanese PS5 port happen at some point, but a certain headline-grabbing lawsuit might be to blame for the indefinite delay.