Palworld Developers Talk About Possible Switch 2 Release

Gamers eager to catch Pokémon-like monsters on their Nintendo Switch might need to hold their horses. Palworld, the breakout hit of 2024, won't be making its debut on Nintendo's popular handheld console, and there's a pretty interesting reason why.

During the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC), Palworld’s communications director, John Buckley, told IGN that the game demands a lot of processing power, which the Switch just doesn’t have. "If we could make the game work on the Switch, we would, but Palworld is a beefy game," Buckley candidly shared.

But don't lose hope just yet. The developers are keeping an eye on the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2. “We haven’t seen [the Switch 2] specs yet,” Buckley said. “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.”

The game's journey hasn't been all smooth sailing. Palworld stirred up quite the controversy with its uncanny resemblance to Pokémon, leading to a lawsuit that caught the entire development team off guard. But here's the twist—this legal drama isn't why the game isn't on Switch. In fact, Buckley revealed previously that the team had done extensive legal checks before the game's release. “We did legal checks before Palworld released, and they were all cleared in Japan,” Buckley told PC Gamer.

Despite the legal drama, Pocketpair has been rolling out regular updates, adding new monsters and features. Most recently, the game introduced crossplay between PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, making it even more accessible.