Palworld Director: Considering Nintendo Switch 2 if It's 'Beefy Enough'

When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure Palworld launched, it drew immediate comparisons to Pokemon, with many dubbing it "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparison not being Pocketpair's favorite, as noted by communications director John 'Bucky' Buckley, the allure of collecting cute monsters has led fans to wonder if Palworld might ever make its way to the Nintendo Switch, the home platform for Pokemon.

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," Buckley 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 also inquired about the possibility of a release on the rumored Nintendo Switch 2. Buckley expressed interest but admitted that they haven't yet seen the specifications 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 shared.

He further added, "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."

While Pocketpair is embroiled in a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics, Buckley clarified that this legal battle isn't the primary reason Palworld hasn't been released on the Switch. In his GDC talk, Buckley briefly touched on the lawsuit, expressing the team's surprise and the extensive legal checks they conducted prior to the game's release to avoid such issues. "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."

This raises the question of whether Nintendo would permit a game it has contested to appear on its next-generation console.

We'll be sharing our full interview with Buckley from GDC later this week, so stay tuned for more insights on Palworld. In the meantime, it's a perfect opportunity to dive back into Palworld, especially with the recent update introducing cross-platform play.