When Pocketpair’s monster capturing survival journey Palworld launched, many individuals in contrast it to Pokemon, specificallycalling it “Pokemon with weapons.” It’s not Pocketpair’s favourite comparability, in keeping with communications director John ‘Bucky’ Buckley, however the considered accumulating a following of cute monsters has nonetheless prompted quite a few folks to ask if Palworld would ever make it to Pokemon’s platform of selection, the Nintendo Switch.
Unfortunately, in keeping with Buckley, that is not within the playing cards, largely as a result of technical causes. “If we may make the sport work on the Switch, we’d, however Palworld is a beefy sport.”
I spoke to Buckley on the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco final week following his speak, ‘Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.’ During our chat, I additionally requested Buckley about the potential for a Nintendo Switch 2 launch. He stated that Pocketpair is , however hasn’t gotten an opportunity to see if a port is even potential but.
“We have not seen these specs but,” he stated. “Like everybody else, we’re ready. I’m strolling round GDC hoping somebody will inform me them, however everybody I’ve spoken to says they have not even seen them.
“If it is beefy sufficient, it is 100% price contemplating. We did lots of optimization for Steam Deck, which we had been actually pleased with. Still work to do, however we’re actually pleased with the way it turned out. So we want to get it on extra handhelds if potential.”
Pocketpair stays entangled in a lawsuit from Nintendo over alleged patent infringement towards Pokemon’s ball-throwing mechanics, main some to invest that to be the precise motive Palworld hadn’t made it to Switch.
But the lawsuit is not actually what’s stopping the studio from releasing video games on Nintendo’s platforms, as we noticed again in January. Buckley addressed the lawsuit very briefly in his GDC talk, saying that it caught the staff abruptly, and that the staff had carried out quite a few authorized checks within the lead-up to launch in an effort to forestall that precise factor. “Pretty a lot everybody at Pocketpair is a large fan [of Pokemon],” Buckley stated within the speak, “so it was a really miserable day, everybody heads down and strolling within the rain.”
The query is, would Nintendo permit a sport it is taken such problem with on its next-gen console?
We’ll be posting our full interview with Buckley at GDC later this week, so preserve checking again for extra about Palworld. In the meantime, it is a good time to revisit Palworld for those who’ve stepped away, as the sport simply received cross-platform play in a brand new replace final week.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a narrative tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
