Pokémon Bank Users Encouraged To Transfer Pokémon To Pokémon Home ASAP

Hopefully I have it downloaded on my 3ds lol.

They better make it possible to play the older stuff on modern hardware then, cause there's still going to be reasons to transfer old Pokémon all the way up if I'm not mistaken.

Having Pokemon games from as far back as Ruby and Sapphire lose important functionality is a big yikes.

This requires paying the extortionate fee for HOME, so no thanks. I’ll leave all my old mon on my pre-Switch consoles, thank you.

Shame Nintendo and Game freak didn't really put much effort into preventing this. Another reason to use more unofficial ways I guess.

I wouldn't be shocked if these services remain active for quite a few years to come. Pokemon is it's own separate weird head to Nintendo that plays by its own rules, and when one single device can officially transfer pokemon from the OG Gen 1-2, and 4-7 games (gen 4 having to jump through some hoops to get to a player's game where they can get into Bank, and gen 1 and 2 having to be the VC releases for the 3DS) to the modern environment when nothing else really can, they're going to want to keep that kind of service alive until the modern solutions accommodate for all these past gens as well. (As an aside, a hacked 3DS can easily transfer pokemon from all of the first 7 gen games (gen 3 included) into Bank, all the more exemplifying how important that single handheld and its online functionality is to the entire franchise (at this point anyway)).

I won't make use of it. I find Home to be too expensive and I don't play Switch pokémon games enough to justify it. If I ever get into pokémon again I'll just start fresh. They really made me stop caring about it lol.

@Yoshinator Unfortunately, thanks to a Home update, Pokemon may be flagged as illegal if they are transferred into a Switch game without an extra hidden ID assigned to the Pokemon as they pass through from Bank to Home. Just sucks that when this goes offline, older Pokemon that were legitimately caught won't have a way to be perfectly legal on newer adventures.

@duffmmann you can also transfer gen 3 in a legal way. It is just more hoops to jump through

We're not gonna tell you the service is ending but... you should probably act asap as if the service is ending

@Yoshinator Unfortunately this was an inevitability. It costs money to keep the Bank servers online and if no active game is compatible with it, they don't have a source of revenue to pay for it. This was bound to happen once they decided to replace Bank with Home.

So if I wanna transfer a mon from GBA games, I gotta do it before April?

Wow. So since third gen we have been able to seamlessly move pokemon throughout each subsequent generation. But they are now going to ruin everything before the Switch at some unspecified point? What a load of trash. Shame on Nintendo!

Crap. I’d better go back and finish catching all the Ultra Beasts.

@ESC71 I believe they were talking about what can be done from just owning a 3DS. The do the Gen 3 games and the Gen 1 remakes, you need a DS or DS Lite too. Although once you have a DS or DS Lite, it can act as the second system for the Gen 4 and Gen 2 remake - Gen 5 transfer method too.

@Wolfleaf Bank and Transporter were free downloads. If you only downloaded them back before the eShop closed, then first booted them up after the eShop closed, you would have had them for free. However, whilst the eShop was still around, you had to pay to use Bank because the subscription for it was still around.

I'm reluctant to leave Pokémon Bank until all my Pokémon are transferable into Switch games, there's still a hand few that would be stuck on Pokémon Home, forcing me to pay a subscription

Although if there were less than 30, I guess I would be OK on the free tier. I'll need to update my spreadsheet after the final Sc/Vi DLC comes our

@GarlicGuzzler yes & no. Whilst the online functions of the 3ds/wii u are being disabled it's been confirmed that Pokemon Bank WILL continue to function after.

However this is NOT permenant. What they're most likely going to do is leave it running but not actively ensure it functions properly beyond "early 2024".

basically, whilst bank will still work after the online is closed off, they're not making any guarantees bank will work beyond that early 2024 date.

Bank could continue working perfectly for 10 years after the online closure or something could go wrong 2 months later and it's not getting fixed.

So if you use Bank BEFORE "early 2024" you've got nothing to worry about. If you try to use it after that you should be ok, but there's no guarantee.

@Pachrisu (According to datamined info)After the 2nd part of the s/v dlc launches. There will only be 9 pokemon not usable in any switch game.

1. patrat
2. watchog
3. pansear
4. simisear
5. pansage
6. simisage
7. panpour
8. simipour
9. furfrou

If the theories that the next pokemon game on switch will be gen 5 related (either a remake or legends arceus style story) that list will go down to 1 soon enough.

I'm good, I transferred everything over pretty much as soon as Home was first launched. Really I haven't touched my 3DS since WarioWare Gold.

@domatron66 Thanks for the info, I'll consider transferring them later this year!

I'll note that "not usable in any switch game" skips over that Spinda can't be transferred in/out of BD/SP, and as far as I'm aware can't be transferred into any others. But hopefully that's just 1 additional exception that will be stuck in Home

@Wolfleaf Interesting to know. I got them when they first came out and would have an active subscription only when I needed to transfer stuff, which hasn't been all too often, so I didn't remember that. I assume installing Bank and Transporter through other means would work fine though.

I've been so turned off from Home/Transporter.. After a recent playthrough of Brilliant Diamond (where I transferred just two Pokemon over to my game) I transferred all the Pokemon I caught in the playthrough to Home when I realized, to my horror, that all my high level Pokemon, shinies and legendaries from all my previous DS, 3DS and VC games with unique movesets were given the same generic moves. They never moved out of Home so there was no reason for this to happen.. I was heartbroken and months later I'm not sure I'll ever want to go back. I'm sure there's some convoluted GameFreak reason it happened

On one hand, the logical part of my brain that knows and understands this move from Pokemon Bank (I finished moving all I cared to earlier this year after it became free) to Pokemon Home would be wise to do sooner than later. I've mostly just stored legit favorites and old event Pokemon, though sadly my Spiky-Eared Pichu is stuck in Gen 4 due to a long-known issue with her unique sprite.

On the other, the suspicious part of my mind thinks they just want to start racking up Pokemon Home subs faster. Sadly, there's absolutely no way I can get by with just using the free storage tier, so I've been delaying moving.

I'm just surprised to see people so egregious over something we knew was coming. And even with this news, we are still given enough heads up to settle whatever it is we need to.

I mean, does it suck that Bank or access to past games can't last forever? Sure. I do agree with @Dom_31 that it would be nice to have all of Gen 1--8 available in some form on the Switch. Though, I assume the idea is to have all Pokémon available across the Switch games (and GO) in some form

Thought about it, I'm less bitter and played pla but I think I wanna keep my guys in gen seven where they keep all their moves and can mega and I hear the new meta would be hell for them and ya know they'd sort of be held for ransom with the subscription and I might not be able to use a good few of them for a long while... Less bitter but all of that.

"Hey guys, we aren't shutting down the cheaper pokemon boxes just yet, but we advise you sub to our overpriced replacment as soon as possible so we can fleece more money out of you."

No! I put all my Pokémon in the bank once it became free, but I'm not paying a rental fee to store them in the cloud.

If there was just a one time purchase or some sort of free trial it would be fine! Don't kill my living 'dex!

Damn, got to go get that shiny Celebi in pokemon crystal asap… i don’t like being rushed into stuff due to fomo…

Guess I better complete that Delta Episode in Alpha Sapphire if I want Deoxys on my Switch at some point.

I really wish they could just make it work offline to use locally with the 3DS games beyond its online functionality

I feel as though I should not be pressured into fomo and just accept that an era has ended, and be glad I was apart of it.

If I were to transferred my Pokemon from every previous Gen to Pokemon Home, I wouldn't be able to use most of them anyway, because the latest Pokemon games prohibit it (plus some moves have been deleted).

Those Pokemon would be stuck in the cloud with nowhere to go for an eternity and meanwhile I would be burning money for no point.

If the Pokemon Company were to hint that we could use nearly all the Pokemon in a future competitive game (not single player), then maybe I would spend a bit more and transfer, instead of having 'faith' in a mega corp that may or may not listen to its fanbase anymore.

Pokémon Home is a money grab subscription. TPC purposely limited the Pokémon dex in games so that we NEED Home to store the unused one somewhere as we can’t just store them in a game anymore and transfer them over.

There is no reason why they can’t have the whole dex in a game in this age. Need time to balance the game? Or more people to make the models etc? All these are excuses for the world’s largest media company.

If we can fly to the moon 2000 digital creatures in a game is nothing.
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I'm good, I don't ever use the bank anymore.

The main reason I have for not transferring Bank pokemon over to Home is that I would then have to keep paying for the Home subscription forever, or risk losing my creatures. That wasn't so much of an issue back in the Bank era, since any pokemon could just be transferred back into Ultra Sun/Moon if I wanted to stop paying for Bank. But, in the Home era with the whole Dexit issue, that's no longer an option.

Trying to finish up my replaying of the series and getting all the ribbons that I can before it's too late!

@TheMegaMarshtomp well, you better transfer them back to your 3ds games asap then, because Bank probably isn't long for this world. My guess is maybe a couple months after April

@crimsontadpoles by the time the last dlc for SV comes out, most of them should be accounted for. Teal Mask already filled in a lot of the gaps.

And I mean... it's $15 for a whole year. Imo that's not unreasonable.

@Boston_J That's a known thing, of a move doesn't exist in a game you're trying to transfer to or the Pokemon can't learn the move, then it'll get removed. Surfing Pikachu, etc will get changed, just how it is.

@jrpacman you can get them in the SwSh dlc too

@SvenBTB so because I connected to Home to transfer just two Pokemon to Brilliant Diamond, ALL my Pokemon that are in Home had their moves changed?

Cutting off transfers from gen 3 through to home is going to hurt. Pokemon Bank was a mistake.

@Boston_J Starting at Sword and Shield, the movepool for each Pokemon game was redefined and has to match a current game. Sword and Shield is considered the base Home game for moveset changes, but when you transfer your Pokemon over to any other game, they will have their learned movepool change to their default level movepool, the most recent 4 moves they could have learned from level ups. The only nice part about all of this is that Home remembers what the movesets are per game, so while every time it will be reset going forward into new remakes and Gen 10, so once you fix it for Brilliant Diamond, you'll never have to fix it for Brilliant Diamond again. With Pokemon Home actually supporting sending compatible Pokemon backwards from Gen 9 to Gen 8 games, just like sending Gen 2 Kanto mons into Gen 1, once the moveset is fixed, it will remain set and you can teach new moves if they come out. In a bizzare way, it gives a Pokemon more than 4 moves to use at a time, but still limited to 4 per game.

Still absolutely sucks how this is mandatory and you lose the PP Ups you invested and whatnot, but hey the move relearners have been really easy lately.

@crimsontadpoles Well, you don't lose your Pokémon if you don't pay for a premium account. You do lose access to those additional boxes. But your Pokémon remain until you re-up for however long.

Now I don't know if there is a limit on how long they'll remain in there if you don't have a premium account or don't use it. But I know I went about 4 or 5 months without premium before the DLC was released.

Edit: Let me make it clear. That's not a defense or an endorsement for using Home. Just pointing out the functionality of it. At least with my experience. Again, I don't know if there is a specific amount of time spelled out somewhere that they will store your Pokémon without any activity or without a premium subscription

At this point, I think I'll just leave all of my 3DS Pokemon and living Pokedex behind. The tripled price of Pokemon home is gross, and it's a prison.
(While more and more pokemon are available in switch games, it's kind of pointless if I can't keep more OG teams together in the same game).

And besides, since catching Pokemon is so easy in the new ones, I've just been completing their shrunken Pokedexes well before Home connectivity even comes out.

The real downside of losing Pokemon Bank is the loss of connectivity (or at least ease of transfer) between the 3DS games.

Dexit still tastes real sour.

Why did they require an online service for gen 7-8 transfer? What would have been so difficult about a direct transfer app like PokeTransportet?

And risk not even being able to use the mons I transfer over to Home where they'll just sit in unusable purgatory? Yeah no thanks, they will stay on my 3DS

@ESC71 if you mod your 3DS, yes. Officially though, you'd need to use an addional DS phat/lite to get it done.

Uh oh. When that happens, the GBA connection will be lost. Forever.
Unless fans do what they do best of course.

"We encourage players to transfer their Pokemon to Pokemon Home, where they may or may not be trapped there, rotting, waiting on a game that they actually are featured and usable in, all while you continue to pay the annual ransom fee "

Pure money grubbing.

3DS uses SD cards.
Switch uses SD cards.
No reason PKM files couldn't be stored locally on an SD card and be transferred that way.

For what it's worth my Pokemon Bank app says "?47 days free trial remaining", so maybe they'll keep it up for 47 more days?

Does anyone have any advice or know any resources for where we can go to know what games/DLC we'd need to transfer our specific Pokémon? Thanks!