When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, hit the gaming scene, it quickly drew comparisons to Pokemon, with some dubbing it "Pokemon with guns." Despite Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, expressing that the comparison isn't their favorite, the allure of collecting cute monsters has led many fans to wonder if Palworld would ever make its way to the Nintendo Switch, the home of Pokemon.
Unfortunately, according to Buckley, a Switch release isn't on the horizon due to technical constraints. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," he stated. I had the chance to catch up with Buckley at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco following his insightful talk, 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.' During our discussion, I inquired about the possibility of Palworld being ported to the rumored Nintendo Switch 2. Buckley expressed interest but noted that they haven't seen the specs yet. "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," he explained.
He further elaborated on the potential for a Switch 2 release, stating, "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."
Amidst these technical considerations, Pocketpair is also dealing with a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics. This has fueled speculation that the lawsuit might be the real barrier to a Switch release. However, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the lawsuit wasn't the primary reason for not releasing on Nintendo's platforms. He mentioned that the legal action caught the team by surprise, despite having conducted numerous legal checks beforehand 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."
This raises the question: would Nintendo even allow a game it's taken such issue with to be released on its next-gen console?
Stay tuned for our full interview with Buckley from GDC, which we'll be posting later this week. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from Palworld, now might be the perfect time to dive back in, especially with the recent addition of cross-platform play in the latest update.
