When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, was launched, it quickly drew comparisons to the Pokemon series, often being referred to as "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparisons, which Pocketpair's communications director John 'Bucky' Buckley isn't particularly fond of, the allure of collecting cute monsters has led many to wonder if Palworld would ever be available on the Nintendo Switch.
Unfortunately, Buckley confirmed that a Switch release isn't feasible due to technical constraints. He stated, "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game."
At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, following his talk titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop,' Buckley discussed the potential for a release on the rumored Nintendo Switch 2. He expressed interest but noted that without seeing the specifications, it's too early to tell if a port is possible. "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 true reason Palworld isn't on the Switch. However, Buckley clarified that the lawsuit isn't the barrier to releasing on Nintendo's platforms. In his GDC talk, he briefly touched on the lawsuit, mentioning it caught the team off guard despite thorough legal checks before the game's release. "Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan [of Pokemon]," Buckley said, "so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain."
The lingering question remains: Would Nintendo allow a game it's taken issue with onto its next-generation console?
We will be posting our full interview with Buckley from GDC later this week, so stay tuned for more updates on Palworld. In the meantime, it's an excellent opportunity to revisit the game, especially with the recent addition of cross-platform play in the latest update.
