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

When Palworld, Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, hit the market, it quickly drew comparisons to Pokemon, with some dubbing it "Pokemon with guns." Despite the comparison not being Pocketpair's favorite, as noted by communications director John 'Bucky' Buckley, the allure of amassing a collection of cute monsters has sparked interest in whether Palworld might find its way to the Nintendo Switch, Pokemon's preferred platform.

Unfortunately, Buckley 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 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 I inquired about the potential for a Nintendo Switch 2 release, Buckley expressed interest but admitted they haven'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 shared.

"If it's beefy enough, it's 100% worth considering," Buckley added, highlighting the team's successful optimization efforts for the Steam Deck. "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."

The backdrop to these discussions is Pocketpair's ongoing lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics. This has led to speculation that legal issues might be the real barrier to a Switch release. However, Buckley clarified during his GDC talk that the lawsuit was not the primary obstacle to releasing Palworld on Nintendo's platforms. He briefly touched on the lawsuit, expressing the team's surprise and their extensive legal checks prior to the game's launch to avoid such issues. "Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan [of Pokemon]," Buckley remarked, "so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain."

The big question remains: would Nintendo allow a game it's legally challenged on its next-gen console? We'll have more insights from our full interview with Buckley at GDC later this week, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from Palworld, now's a great time to dive back in, especially with the recent addition of cross-platform play in the latest update.