When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, was released, it quickly drew comparisons to Pokemon, often being dubbed "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparison not being Pocketpair's favorite, as noted by communications director John 'Bucky' Buckley, the allure of collecting cute monsters has led many to wonder if Palworld would ever find its way to the Nintendo Switch, the preferred platform for Pokemon games.
Unfortunately, Buckley has confirmed that a Switch release is unlikely due to technical constraints. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," he explained.
During a conversation at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, following Buckley's talk titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop,' I inquired about the possibility of a release on the rumored Nintendo Switch 2. Buckley expressed interest but noted that without access to the new console's specifications, it's too early to determine feasibility. "We haven't seen those specs yet," he said. "Like everyone else, we're waiting. I'm walking around GDC hoping someone will tell me them, but everyone I've spoken to says they haven't even seen them. If it's beefy enough, it's 100% worth considering. We did a lot of optimization for Steam Deck, which we were really happy with. Still work to do, but we're really happy with how it turned out. So we would like to get it on more handhelds if possible."
Speculation has arisen that a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics might be the real reason Palworld hasn't appeared on the Switch. However, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the lawsuit was unexpected and that the team had conducted extensive legal reviews before the game's launch to avoid such issues. "Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan [of Pokemon]," Buckley shared, "so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain."
The question remains whether Nintendo would permit a game it has legally challenged to be released on its next-generation console.
Stay tuned for our full interview with Buckley from GDC, which will be posted later this week. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from Palworld, now might be a great time to return, as the game recently introduced cross-platform play in its latest update.
