Palworld Director Eyes Nintendo Switch 2 if 'Beefy Enough'

When Pocketpair launched their monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, it drew immediate comparisons to Pokemon, often being dubbed "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparison not being Pocketpair's favorite, as stated by their communications director John 'Bucky' Buckley, the allure of collecting adorable monsters has led many to wonder if Palworld could ever make its way to the Nintendo Switch, the platform of choice for Pokemon fans.

Unfortunately, Buckley has confirmed that a Switch release is not on the horizon, primarily due to technical constraints. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," he explained. I had the opportunity to speak with Buckley at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco following his talk titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.' During our conversation, I also inquired about the potential for a Nintendo Switch 2 release. Buckley expressed interest but noted that without seeing the specs, it's too early to tell if a port is feasible.

"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."

Amidst these technical considerations, Pocketpair is also navigating a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics. This has led some to speculate that this legal battle might be the true reason Palworld hasn't made it to the Switch. However, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the lawsuit isn't the primary barrier to releasing on Nintendo's platforms. He briefly touched on the lawsuit, mentioning that 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 question remains whether Nintendo would allow a game it's in legal contention with on its next-gen console. We'll be posting our full interview with Buckley from GDC later this week, so stay tuned for more insights on Palworld. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from the game, now's a great time to jump back in, as Palworld recently introduced cross-platform play in its latest update.