Pokemon X and Y's Pokemon Bank Won't Launch Until Dec 27

[Steven Bogos]

Pokemon X and Y's Pokemon Bank Won't Launch Until Dec 27

The service, which allows online Pokemon storage and transfer of your old Gen V Pokemon to X and Y, will cost $5 a year.

If you were planning on bringing all of your old friends from Pokemon Black and White and Black and White 2 with you on your Pokemon X and Y journey, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a few months. Nintendo has revealed that Pokemon Bank, an online Pokemon storage system, and Poke Transporter, the service that will allow transfer of Gen V Pokemon to Gen VI, won't launch until December 27, over two months after the game's October 12 release date.

Access to the Pokemon Bank service will come with a yearly fee of $5, but the first month will be free, if you download and use the app by January 31, 2014. Pokemon Bank will give you access to 100 storage boxes of your own, enabling you to store up to 3,000 Pokemon.

The Poke Transporter is actually a separate app to the Pokemon Bank that only works with the Gen V games, but still requires the Pokemon Bank subscription to use. You'll be able to download it for free once you subscribe to Pokemon Bank. Note that once you've Poke Transferred a Pokemon from your Gen V game to your Pokemon Bank, you won't be able to move him back.

Nintendo stresses that the Pokemon Bank is a "long term" service, and will be compatible with all future Pokemon games.

I'm pretty big into Pokemon, but I still honestly can't see a need to have all of that extra online storage, and will most likely just use the one-month free trial to move all my Gen V guys across. What do you guys think?

Source: Siliconera [http://www.siliconera.com/2013/10/04/pokemon-bank-cloud-service-launch-december-will-cost-5-year/]

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[Skeleon]

That's kind of sad considering it was one of the main features promoted...
Also, this bank-thing with the money-scheme makes it even less likely for any future game to feature (almost) all Pokemon ever. Because it'd lose its justification for existence if a player could actually achieve full completion on their own without it or trading. Too bad.
Hm, I wonder when the combined game will be released.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Breeders? maybe some one really into breeding 'the perfect pokemon' will use the hell out of this, me? not so much, free month and I'll be good.

 

[loa]

I hope they didn't cut the in-game storage to ridiculous levels in order to promote this.
Also 100 boxes that work independantly from your save file so you can restart the game without deleting everything would be easily possible in-game but nintendo has to make it as awkward and convoluted as possible yet again.

 

[trytoguess]

...I don't get it (note I don't own a 3DS). The 3DS has external storage in the form of SD cards correct? Why would you need to deal with all this cloud storage hullabaloo when one could simply create a save file big enough to accommodate the extra Pokemon? At best, this speaks to a rather bizarre limitation of the 3DS. At worst, this is a rather sad attempt to grab extra money from the Pokemon fanbase.

 

[Baldr]

...I don't get it (note I don't own a 3DS). The 3DS has external storage in the form of SD cards correct? Why would you need to deal with all this cloud storage hullabaloo when one could simply create a save file big enough to accommodate the extra Pokemon? At best, this speaks to a rather bizarre limitation of the 3DS. At worst, this is a rather sad attempt to grab extra money from the Pokemon fanbase.

It not the disk space storage as so much as how much storage the game has built in. The storage system hasn't really that evolved much since the first game, so it limited to a couple hundred spaces.

 

[trytoguess]

It not the disk space storage as so much as how much storage the game has built in. The storage system hasn't really that evolved much since the first game, so it limited to a couple hundred spaces.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying the issue is there's a hard limit of how many Pokemon you can put away. That doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve from a programming pov. Might be something of a challenge from a ui perspective though.

 

[BanicRhys]

Thank Arceus for this, I've only five box spaces left between my copy of White and White 2.

I hope they didn't cut the in-game storage to ridiculous levels in order to promote this.

Yes, I'm sure mean, old Nintendo would go to any lengths to squeeze those $5 per year out of us.

 

[Yopaz]

Thank Arceus for this, I've only five box spaces left between my copy of White and White 2.

I hope they didn't cut the in-game storage to ridiculous levels in order to promote this.

Yes, I'm sure mean, old Nintendo would go to any lengths to squeeze those $5 per year out of us.

Don't forget that in Europe they will probably charge 5 euros. They'll get seriously rich because of those suckers who actually pay for a one year service.

It's a shame that it will take this long for the service to come, I kinda wished to transfer my Dragonite so I could have him as a part of my team when I beat enough gyms. Oh well, just another week left for the game at least. I can't wait.

 

[BooTsPs3]

Wasn't this announced with the pokemon bank a long time ago? Release date and all?

Don't know how i feel about this. There is a free trial. But afterwards if i wanna transfer pokes from old gen i need to pay. Even if it is cheap, i'll have already spent full price on the game, not to mention it won't be out for a while after launch, meaning i can't play X or Y competitively this year with my old pokes.

It's kinda disappointing that this costs anything, when every other gen was free to transfer up. And it's not like money is the problem. Pokemons main series is a yearly franchise with two games a year. Why can't a little of my purchase cost cover the cost of this?

 

[TimeLord]

It's kinda disappointing that this costs anything, when every other gen was free to transfer up. And it's not like money is the problem. Pokemons main series is a yearly franchise with two games a year. Why can't a little of my purchase cost cover the cost of this?

Every other gen had a transfer technique that either required a DSi (GBA to DS) or two DSs. Also the old way of transferring was limited to 6 at a time. This can be done box by box.
Also they need to cover server costs somehow.

Personally, I'm so glad something like this finally exists. Game Freak seem to have been punishing people for transferring pokemon from older gens for years now and while the release date disappoints me (I was hoping to transfer everything right away) I'll still drop $5 or whatever the UK equivilant will be.... Probably £5

 

[hickwarrior]

It's kinda disappointing that this costs anything, when every other gen was free to transfer up. And it's not like money is the problem. Pokemons main series is a yearly franchise with two games a year. Why can't a little of my purchase cost cover the cost of this?

Every other gen had a transfer technique that either required a DSi (GBA to DS) or two DSs. Also the old way of transferring was limited to 6 at a time. This can be done box by box.
Also they need to cover server costs somehow.

Personally, I'm so glad something like this finally exists. Game Freak seem to have been punishing people for transferring pokemon from older gens for years now and while the release date disappoints me (I was hoping to transfer everything right away) I'll still drop $5 or whatever the UK equivilant will be.... Probably £5

I heartily agree here... Although I used the heartgold/soulsilver transfer to gen V and I know I've used the transfer from gen III to IV, it's a pain to keep having to do it to 6 at a time. Especially considering how many pokémon there are now.

Besides, just 5 for a year? I'd pay it if I have a need for it.

I do wonder how much box space you'd get in-game though... or if you're forced to use the service if you want to use this system.

EDIT: I mean, is this the new box system, or will it still be in the game. Hope the latter is true, or they'd screw a lot of people with it.

 

[Dragonbums]

I'm pretty big into Pokemon, but I still honestly can't see a need to have all of that extra online storage, and will most likely just use the one-month free trial to move all my Gen V guys across. What do you guys think?

That's because you are leaving out a big portion of the metagame Pokemon community.

Often times the best of the best not only do EV and nature training, but also IV training which requires A LOT of breeding. And if you have a team of six with multiple variations the in game 30 boxes is not going to cut it. Like, at ALL. This is also excluding the fact that those same people have Pokemon from previous games that they never got around to training.


Personally I am not surprised. It's not like you could transfer your Pokemon until you beat the game anyway, which can vary from person to person.
8 weeks ain't so bad in my opinion.

Also, $5.00 a year is ass cheap. Any kid can ask their parent for a subscription like that and they probably won't even miss that money.

 

[Dragonbums]

I hope they didn't cut the in-game storage to ridiculous levels in order to promote this.
Also 100 boxes that work independantly from your save file so you can restart the game without deleting everything would be easily possible in-game but nintendo has to make it as awkward and convoluted as possible yet again.

How? All you literally have to do is download the app, do the subscription and send your Pokemon in there for all eternity.

That's not exactly complicated. Especially if your only using it for Pokemon X and Y pokes and have no plans on transferring your old ones.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I'm still pretty OK with Pokemon Bank, subscription fee and all. Though I wish they would have it set up a bit sooner, if I'm understanding it correctly, we will need the app in order to transfer our old Pokemon to gen 6. I wish we could still use a DS and 3DS means of transfer until the service is ready.

Either way, I'm glad to have a place to put a whole bunch of my GTS Reshirams where they will be safe.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

So this service is the only way to transfer pokemon between the two generations? That's kind of lame, then. I was hoping I'd get to transfer in the army of Eevees I've been breeding, but I guess I'll have to wait.

It's an interesting idea, especially for someone like me that trades in games a lot. Knowing that I can stash my pokemon somewhere else in between trades is nice, but we'll see how well that works out in the future.

 

[UltimatheChosen]

What I would have done if I were them is make it so that you get a free year of it when you buy the game new (as opposed to used).

 

[Dragonbums]

I'm pretty big into Pokemon, but I still honestly can't see a need to have all of that extra online storage, and will most likely just use the one-month free trial to move all my Gen V guys across. What do you guys think?

That's because you are leaving out a big portion of the metagame Pokemon community.

Often times the best of the best not only do EV and nature training, but also IV training which requires A LOT of breeding. And if you have a team of six with multiple variations the in game 30 boxes is not going to cut it. Like, at ALL. This is also excluding the fact that those same people have Pokemon from previous games that they never got around to training.


Personally I am not surprised. It's not like you could transfer your Pokemon until you beat the game anyway, which can vary from person to person.
8 weeks ain't so bad in my opinion.

Also, $5.00 a year is ass cheap. Any kid can ask their parent for a subscription like that and they probably won't even miss that money.

And the major competing portion of the Pokemon category don't bother with that stuff. If they are doing it for competitions, they use hacked Pokemon, they don't go through the time it takes to raise it. And Nintendo allows this as long as the hacked Pokemon don't have anything they couldn't get naturally.

So, actually, the best of the best don't deal with that crap.

I'm on the metagame a lot.
And while I don't breed for IV's, I do soft reset for natures.

And I can tell you for a fact that a large portion of EV/IV trainers are on the in game Wi-fi gaming sphere.
Not only that, Gamefreak has implemented a system where they can tell the difference between a hacked Pokemon and a legitimate one.
While they won't do anything if you are battling with your friends either local or online- the very moment you put that Pokemon on their official servers they will detect it and either kick out that Pokemon, or ban you from online.
The moment it sees that your Pikachu is even one

 

[AuronFtw]

Also they need to cover server costs somehow.

$40 box price? Chances are only a small fraction of the playerbase will use this, and a smaller fraction still will actually play for the whole year. They could easily have taken it out of the box price at very little loss, if any.

It's not the epitome of dirty moneygrabs on par with EA, but it's pretty questionable. Especially considering how wifi pokesav will be working a few weeks after launch, if not earlier, making long-term pokemon storage kinda pointless to all but the most extreme of collectors (who are a very, very tiny minority; again, easily covered by box sales).