When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, hit the market, it quickly drew comparisons to Pokemon, often being dubbed "Pokemon with guns." While Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, isn't thrilled with the comparison, the allure of collecting adorable monsters has led many to wonder if Palworld would ever find its way to the Nintendo Switch, the home of Pokemon.
Unfortunately, Buckley has dashed those hopes, citing technical limitations. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," he explained. I had the chance to speak with Buckley at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco following his talk, 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.' During our conversation, I also inquired about the possibility of a release on the rumored Nintendo Switch 2. Buckley expressed interest but noted that Pocketpair hasn't yet seen the specs for the new console. "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 said.
Buckley added that if the Nintendo Switch 2 proves powerful enough, it would be worth considering. "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. This has led some to speculate that the lawsuit might be the real 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 mentioned that the lawsuit came as a surprise to the team, despite having conducted numerous 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 has taken issue with to be released on its next-generation console. We'll be posting our full interview with Buckley later this week, so stay tuned for more insights on Palworld. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from the game, now might be a great time to jump back in, as Palworld recently introduced cross-platform play in its latest update.
