When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, hit the market, it drew immediate comparisons to Pokemon, often being dubbed "Pokemon with guns." Although Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, isn't fond of this comparison, 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 console of the Pokemon series.
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 the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, following his talk titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop,' Buckley discussed the possibility of a Nintendo Switch 2 release. He expressed interest but noted that without access to the console's specifications, a port remains uncertain. "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 discussions, Pocketpair is also navigating a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics. This has led to speculation that the lawsuit might be the true barrier to a Switch release. However, Buckley clarified that the lawsuit isn't the primary obstacle preventing Palworld from appearing on Nintendo's platforms. In his GDC talk, he briefly touched on the lawsuit, mentioning how it caught the team off guard despite their extensive legal checks before the game's launch. "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 looming question remains: would Nintendo permit a game it has legally challenged to be released on its next-generation console?
Stay tuned for our full interview with Buckley at GDC, which we'll be posting later this week. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from Palworld, now might be a great time to jump back in, especially with the recent update that introduced cross-platform play.
