The legal dispute between Nintendo and Pocketpair continues, but the Palworld developer has not excluded the possibility of a Switch 2 version of its creature-collecting survival game.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are currently engaged in ongoing litigation against Pocketpair in Japan, with patents concerning how Pokémon games function at the heart of the lawsuit. IP experts have suggested that Nintendo may receive only a $30,000 payout if it wins, yet it is becoming increasingly likely that Nintendo will lose.
Avoiding the obvious issue in an interview with VGC, Pocketpair CEO Takuru Mizobe said he would love to bring Palworld to Switch 2. “Of course,” Mizobe replied when asked whether the studio had Switch 2 ambitions. “First of all, I should say that we think the Switch 2 is a really amazing platform, not just for games globally, but especially here in Japan and for the Japanese games industry.
Palworld: Palfarm First Screenshots
“It’s been an incredible platform. If there’s ever a future where we have the opportunity to discuss or consider bringing Palworld to the Switch platform in some way, then we’d love to have those conversations.”
Of course, the current legal dispute would have to play out before those conversations could take place, and that’s assuming there’s no bad blood once legal proceedings are finished.
Nintendo filed a patent infringement lawsuit in September 2024, but the complaint was modified in November 2025 after Palworld updates changed some of the most egregious of the Pokémon-inspired game mechanics. One such mechanic was the ability to throw a sphere to summon a creature, which was removed in Early Access patch v0.3.11.
Now when you summon a Pal, it simply spawns directly beside your character while you hold out the sphere. This change, made to avoid stepping on Nintendo’s patent, removed some of the tactical options the player had, since they were no longer able to summon a Pal to a specific spot to draw aggro or hit an enemy from a different angle.
The scope of the lawsuit has been narrowed, but the case between Pocketpair and Nintendo and The Pokémon Company remains active within the Tokyo District Court. A preliminary hearing — a first-impression assessment conducted before all the facts are known or a final decision is reached — is scheduled for November 9 this year.
Palworld launched its 1.0 release in July, drawing close to 1 million concurrent players on Steam. In total, the game has now reached over 40 million players.
Kirk McKeand is a Contributor on IGN Wiadomości. Find him on Twitter @MckKirk
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