Palworld Director on Nintendo Switch 2: 'Worth Considering if Beefy Enough'

When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, hit the market, it quickly drew comparisons to Pokemon, with some dubbing it "Pokemon with guns." While Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, isn't thrilled about the comparison, the allure of collecting cute creatures has led many to wonder if Palworld would ever find its way to the Nintendo Switch.

Unfortunately, Buckley has confirmed that a Switch release isn't 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.

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 they haven't yet seen the new console's specs. "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 shared. He added that if the new console is powerful enough, they would seriously consider porting Palworld to it. "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."

The speculation around Palworld's absence from the Switch has also been fueled by an ongoing lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics. However, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the lawsuit isn't the primary barrier to releasing on Nintendo's platforms. He mentioned that the lawsuit came as a surprise to the team, despite their efforts to conduct thorough legal checks before the game's release. "Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan [of Pokemon]," Buckley noted, "so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain."

The lingering question remains whether Nintendo would welcome a game it has legally challenged onto its next-generation console.

Stay tuned for our full interview with Buckley from GDC later this week for more insights into Palworld. In the meantime, it might be the perfect time to dive back into Palworld, especially with the recent addition of cross-platform play in the latest update.