Palworld Director: Considering Switch 2 if 'Beefy Enough'

When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, launched, it drew immediate comparisons to Pokemon, often being dubbed "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparison not being favored by Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, the concept of gathering a collection of cute monsters has sparked interest among fans, leading many to wonder if Palworld would ever find its way onto the Nintendo Switch.

Unfortunately, Buckley confirmed that a Switch release is not feasible due to technical limitations. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," he explained.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, following his talk titled 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop,' I had the opportunity to discuss with Buckley the possibility of a release on the rumored Nintendo Switch 2. He expressed interest but noted that without access to the new console's specifications, it's too early to tell if a port could be viable.

"We haven't seen those specs yet," Buckley mentioned. "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."

While Pocketpair is currently involved in a lawsuit with Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics, Buckley clarified that this legal battle isn't the primary barrier preventing a Switch release. He touched on the lawsuit briefly during his GDC talk, expressing that it was unexpected and disheartening for the team, who are avid Pokemon fans themselves. "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."

This raises the question of whether Nintendo would even consider allowing a game they've legally challenged onto their 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 great opportunity to dive back into Palworld, especially with the recent update that introduced cross-platform play.