When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, was released, it quickly drew comparisons to the iconic Pokemon series, often being dubbed "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparisons not being favored by Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, the allure of collecting cute creatures has led many fans to inquire about a potential release on the Nintendo Switch, the traditional home of Pokemon games.
Unfortunately, Buckley dashed those hopes, citing technical limitations as the primary barrier. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," he explained. This statement was made during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, following Buckley's talk titled '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 hasn't had access to the new console's specifications yet. "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 dealing with a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics. While some speculate that this lawsuit might be the real reason behind Palworld's absence from the Switch, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the legal action was unexpected and had been preceded by extensive legal checks to avoid such issues. "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 overarching question remains: would Nintendo permit a game it's legally challenged to appear on its next-generation console? As the situation unfolds, we'll be sharing our full interview with Buckley from GDC later this week, so stay tuned for more updates on Palworld. In the meantime, now might be a great time to dive back into Palworld, especially with the recent addition of cross-platform play in its latest update.
