Palworld Director: Nintendo Switch 2 Version Viable if 'Beefy Enough'

When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, launched, it drew numerous comparisons to Pokemon, with many dubbing it "Pokemon with guns." Despite Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, expressing discomfort with this comparison, the allure of collecting adorable monsters has led to widespread curiosity about a potential release on the Nintendo Switch.

Unfortunately, Buckley has confirmed that a Switch release is not feasible 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 opportunity to discuss this further with Buckley at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco following his talk, 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.' When asked about the possibility of a release on the rumored Nintendo Switch 2, Buckley expressed interest but noted that Pocketpair has yet to see the new console's specifications. "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 real reason behind Palworld's absence from the Switch. However, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the lawsuit was not the primary barrier to releasing on Nintendo's platforms. He mentioned that the lawsuit came as a surprise to the team, despite having conducted extensive legal checks before the game's release. "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 question remains whether Nintendo would permit a game it has legally challenged to appear on its next-generation console. We will be posting our full interview with Buckley later this week, so stay tuned for more insights on Palworld. In the meantime, it's an excellent opportunity to revisit the game, especially with the recent addition of cross-platform play in its latest update.