Pocketpair has been involved in a protracted legal battle with Nintendo following the launch of the hyper-popular creature collector, Palworld, and it seems as though Nintendo is on the back foot for the time being, with an October 2025 decision by the Japanese Patent Office denying Nintendo’s application for a patent on creature capture mechanics. Still, despite the ongoing legal battle between the two gaming companies, Pocketpair’s CEO, Takuro Mizobe, has commented in a recent interview with VGC that a Nintendo Switch 2 port may be on the cards, as long as Nintendo is willing to come to the table and as long as those conversations are possible.Takuro MizobeFirst 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. 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.
The executive also commented on Pocketpairs approach to game development and specifically the development of Palworld, which he says borrowed heavily from Craftopia, the game that predated Palworld. He also detailed how the game was shaped by user feedback and evolved throughout its early access period and even before that, with the actual launch version of the game leaning much more into the cozy aspects of Palworld, as opposed to the darker “sweatshop image” that was present in the initial announcement trailers.Of course, if you look back at early Palworld, it had much darker themes. It was a bit more controversial. Some of the early trailers showed things that never actually made it into the final game, and some of those things were quite dark.
As we continued developing the game, through Early Access and up to 1.0, we listened to player feedback and gradually started moving more towards the cozier side of living with your Pals, rather than the whole sweatshop image that the game had initially.
Addressing a question about the future of Pocketpair and Palworld, Mizobe explained that the studio wants to keep Palworld alive, but it doesn’t want to think of it as a live service game, instead, it wants to focus “on finding the best way to continue Palworld that makes sense for the players,” and that he wants to “keep finding fun ways to mix things together, because that not only leads to new experimental games, but can also help introduce Palworld to a wider audience.”
