When Pocketpair's monster capturing survival adventure, Palworld, was released, it quickly drew comparisons to Pokemon, earning the nickname "Pokemon with guns." While Pocketpair's communications director, John 'Bucky' Buckley, isn't fond of the comparison, the concept of collecting a diverse array of cute creatures has led many fans to wonder if Palworld could ever find its way to the Nintendo Switch.

Unfortunately, Buckley has confirmed that a Switch release isn't 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. I had the opportunity to speak with Buckley at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco following his talk, 'Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.' During our discussion, I also inquired about the possibility of a Nintendo Switch 2 release. Buckley expressed interest but noted that Pocketpair hasn't yet had access to the specs of the next-gen console. "We haven't seen those specs yet," he said. "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."

Despite being embroiled in a lawsuit with Nintendo over alleged patent infringement related to Pokemon's ball-throwing mechanics, Buckley clarified that the legal issues are not the primary reason Palworld hasn't been released on the Switch. In January, it was clear that other factors were at play. Buckley touched on the lawsuit briefly during his GDC talk, mentioning that it took the team by surprise. He emphasized that the team had conducted thorough legal checks before the game's launch to avoid such conflicts. "Pretty much everyone at Pocketpair is a huge fan [of Pokemon]," Buckley shared during the talk, "so it was a very depressing day, everyone heads down and walking in the rain."

The lingering question remains: would Nintendo permit a game it has contested on its next-generation console?

Stay tuned for our full interview with Buckley from GDC, which will be posted later this week. In the meantime, if you've taken a break from Palworld, now is a great time to jump back in, as the game recently introduced cross-platform play in its latest update.