Palworld Switch Port May be Hard Due to 'Technical Reasons' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 July 2024 / 2,629 Views
Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe in an interview with Game File said a potential Nintendo Switch port of Palworld might be difficult due to the specs of the device.
"So maybe it’s hard to port to Switch just for technical reasons," said Mizobe.
The minimum requirements for the PC version of the game are higher than the specs of the Nintendo Switch.
Palworld has sold over 15 million units on PC via Steam and has surpassed 10 million players on Xbox as of February 22. Overall, the game has surpassed 25 million players.
Palworld released in Early Access on the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass on January 19.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Switch is way too weak for UE5 game
Is Palworld still a thing people play?
Sort of.
It's around 50 on the most played Steam games, which is nothing to sneeze at. It's been losing players, but that seems to have stabalized a bit and they have a core base of around 15-25K players at any given time.
For what it is, it's certainly not doing bad. But, its initial popularity seems to have been a fad/curiosity over Pokemon with guns. People who were proclaiming it to be a Pokemon killer or the next big thing were certainly a bit hasty.
I wouldn't say it's hasty. In early access palworld has sold 15 million units on PC and reached 10 million on Xbox. Baldur's gate 3 was estimated to sell 2.5 million in early access and over 10 million since launch so who knows how many people will buy palworld once it's feature complete. Pokemon scarlet/violet has sold around 24 million on switch
It certainly was hasty. The game has already lost literally 99% of its player base from its peak. Yes it's in early access, but once the momentum is lost for these types of games, it rarely comes back.
Even if Palworld does sell more than Scarlet and Violet (bear in mind it is half the price of Scarlet and Violet on Steam and part of Gamepass on XBox), it seems pretty clear that this is not going to be a huge franchise going forward or have much of a meaningful effect on the Pokemon franchise.
Pokemon Scarlet sold 24m at 60-70 dollars per game, Palword was 10-15 dollars, cheap enough to get people to buy it just to see what it was, even if they dont end up playing it. Put a 60-70 dollars price on Palworld and just see how many copies it sells. Put a 10 dollars price on Pokemon Scarlet and maybe it sells 75 million copies. Price is a big part of the popularity.
Smogon, a popular Pokemon simulator, currently has 13,000 people playing online. My intuition tells me that more people would be playing the Pokemon games themselves than on the sim, so likely more people are playing the games in the franchise collectively than Palworld at the moment. Could be wrong on that.
At any rate, Pokemon games are not designed as continuous experiences like that, so I don't think active userbase is the best metric. As you said, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have sold 24 million units so far. And Arceus sold around 15 million. It gets a bit tricky with third versions, direct sequels, and DLC, but Pokemon game sales have been remarkably consistent. They've sold 20+ million per generation for well over two decades now.
So, Pokemon has maintained its popularity for a quarter of a century. Palworld could not maintain a Pokemon like level of success for a year. I'm really really doubting that we'll be seeing a 9th generation or whatever of Palworld moving millions of copies or see millions of active Palworlders, but if we do, feel free to say you told me so.
I think on Steam it averages around 20k players. Worth keeping in mind though that its in early access so there isn't a huge amount of content (as far as I remember)
So Switch doesn't have to suffer this trash. Fine with me.
I'm really curious about how well Palworld can do once it releases for the Switch 2. Especially if it does so before a Pokemon game is released for it.
Not very well, it’s a PC game through and through. It’s a “Survival Craft” game that has a monster collecting element, but it’s a survival craft game at its core.
Granted Minecraft is popular on Switch so who knows.
Thank you! We don't need this trash game.
Going by how poorly the Xbone version runs, I believe them. Will have to wait until Switch 2.
Yeah their not getting this running on a switch, without massive downgrades, and low fps. Might not be worth the porting, if in the end, its just a bad user experiance.
The switch is trash,
Maybe the switch 2 can run it? Hopefully lol
Water is wet.
Switch can run Doom Enternal.
Stop being lazy. Palworld is not a graphical showcase.
Good luck getting an open world UE5 title running at a decent framerate on the Switch without disabling all Nanite and Lumen and without completely destroying image quality.
UE5 Is Switch compatible. They can lower settings etc.
By technical issues they must mean "Nintendo and Game Freak hates Palworld.".
Essay Pro