Pokemon Bank US Release Officially Delayed

[Dragonbums]

That doesn't surprise me. My friend and I were looking for a Lego set for our other friend at Toys R Us. While my friend searched for a set, I went and asked if they had any Wii U's in stock (just gauging out bundles) dude said they were all gone.

We later went to Gamestop because I caught wind that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky was still there. The place was PACKED, and they ran out of Wii U's.

There were still PLENTY of Xbox Ones though. Selling so bad apparently that an Xbox sales rep was there trying to convince everyone to buy one. Felt real bad for the guy (especially when he admitted to me that he had a PS4 anyway.)

 

[Dragonbums]

I suspect that they might be using that as an excuse to push back release to polish it more, because the worst possible thing for the name would be to have Pokemon Bank shit the bed and delete dozens, if not hundreds, even thousands of pokemon from each player that the player spent hours hatching and training individually. I have no real evidence for it, but just a hunch.

No. Some people got it early due to timezones, and hacked Pokemon were still easily brought into the Bank. While I hae no doubt server load caused huge problems on top of the holiday strain, the hacked Pokemon thing was one of the top reasons for it existing, so they are probably going about fine tuning the thing.

 

[Colt47]

For some reason I'm not surprised the Wii U is selling enough to cause problems on the network. The PS4 and Xbox One only have tech demos for games at the moment unless someone is looking at indie titles.

Too bad I haven't touched either my 3ds or PS Vita for months. PC has been making a serious comeback.

 

[Dragonbums]

I don't know any other game with only 1 save file that deletes your entire progress of which you can make a LOT when you dare to think of restarting your game so you can play the story again.

That's kind of how it's always been...also really who plays Pokemon again for the story?

Just because all the other games had shitty game design and now they finally added the possibility of playing your game over again without deleting everything or buying more of their stuff (and of course that is behind a paywall) doesn't make that feature any less vital to me.

Well the thing is...if you want Pokemon you don't have in your game there is this thing called trading that goes around in Pokemon where you can basically get everything you want by simply requesting for said Pokemon online. You don't even need to buy a new game. At all. As for the paywall, this is a feature that it going to stay for Pokemon eternity. Which means it will be there for the next game, and the next, so on and so forth. Your paying 45 cents a month for a feature that will last you 3 years if you slap in $15.00.

There is no reason for this to be that way too, just don't touch the PC data when resetting the save.

PC data? When the hell did Pokemon ever do something using PC with their games? And why the hell would they do it now, especially with the advent of PC hacks that allowed cheaters to see everything about their opponents hand in game?

It's a really archaic "tradition" with no purpose but to make things inconvenient and maybe give people an "incentive" to buy more games than they normally would which is kind of disgusting since pokemon prints money anyway.

Except that version exclusives incentive you to actually trade with other people online with the opposite version. If you were too lazy to even do that- especially now that they made it much easier to do- then it's your own fault that you gave Gamefreak an extra $35.00 for another game.
Also I'm fairly certain the bigger inconvenience was having to spend hours upon hours playing shitty minigames that only transported 6 Pokemon at a time into your PC box.

There's also no reason to make transferring old pokemon cloud based, it goes through the 3ds memory anyway you can make that local easily but of course, they want to promote their subscription service and force everyone who made any sort of meaningful progress on the previous game and would like to preserve that to go through the pokebank at least once so they may probably have to jump through a million hoops to unsubscribe if nintendo has their card number.
Been there, done that.
Subscription services are pretty much always abusive, clingy bastards.

First problem is that the Pokebank is free for use for one month. So if you only want to use it to transfer Pokemon you can do that for free and never use the Pokebank again.

Secondly as I've stated this horrible, sleazy paywall will cost players a total of 45 cents per month. That's the cheapest subscription I have ever seen in my life. I can pay for 3 years of service by simply putting down $15.00. This is also begetting the fact that trading for Pokemon in game is so fucking easy it's not even funny.

Third- I find it funny your criticizing Nintendo using cloud based servers for their games, yet in threads we laugh and belittle them for not "getting with the times" and not using account/cloud based servers for their stuff.

Fourth, What million hoops? From my understanding you pay $5.00 a year. You don't pay that money you don't use the service. Meaning that it's probably very damn easy to unsubscribe from their program. Why don't you actually wait until it's executed before making judgements like that. Nobody has used it yet to any meaningful extent so we don't even know how hard it is to unsubscribe. Which I'm pretty sure is very fucking easy.

Transferring old pokemon has been a staple of the franchise since the beginning and it has always been free and not dependent on their (terrible!) servers.
If you don't think it's a vital feature, try getting milotic or jellicient right now. I'm waiting.

It's clear that you have never seen the disaster that was Pokemon transfer during the Gold/Silver Ruby/Sapphire fiasco. Which is to say it couldn't happen.

You also can't get a lot of gen 5 Pokemon, gen 4 Pokemon, and gen 3 Pokemon.

You are overreacting. Especially if you really want that Pokemon you get it, put it in your game and get out. If Pokebank closes, you don't have to worry because it's in your game anyway.

 

[loa]

You can't get any Pokemon from generation 3 so it hasn't always been possible. Now they are hiding this feature behind a paywall of 5 dollars... Before they hid it behind an even higher paywall since you needed to buy multiple systems to transfer. Now I don't remember what the old Game Boys cost, but I am fairly certain they cost more than 5 dollars.


Also despite what you think it's not a vital feature. A vital feature is something you NEED to play the game. So answer me this: is it possible to play the game without this feature? If so then it's not vital for any known definition of vital. Nor is it essential. it was advertised as a selling point of the new generation so it should have been out by now, but it's not vital. Stop making over reacting the new default reaction.

I wonder if you'd sing the same tune if you could only play through diablo 2 once and had to delete everything if you wanted to have another go or if the shared stash in path of exile is now pay-only or if you lose all of your unlocked whatevers in call of duty if you restart the story mode.
Hell I can't even come up with proper analogies to this, there's really nothing else that has such a terrible "feature" so deeply ingrained in its guts and still gets away with it with no criticism for it.

Quality of life features are pretty vital to me and restarting a grindy game with a whole world of a metagame to build up to without losing all of that progress is as basic as it gets.

 

[loa]

I think he's talking about the in-game PC, though it doesn't stop it from being a kinda... silly thing. Considering the PC is tied into the player's ID and the fact that you could completely break the game by keeping Legendaries in the PC/'Transfer box' (before anyone jumps at me with that stupid idea) filled to the gills with powerful items to completely destroy the game when you access the first PC. Let alone the possibility of just keeping all the pokemon in the pokedex in your PC and the second you boot up it's like BAM! FINISHED THE POKEDEX BEFORE I LEFT THE FIRST TOWN, PROFESSOR DICK-BAG!

...so yeah, no. Still a terrible idea. As annoying as it gets transferring 120-140 pokemon everytime I want to start a new game (what? Been collecting since gen III and I have a lot of teams), even I'm against the 'just keep the PC's over games' idea.

You can do exactly that with the pokebank or just plain old trading...

Also here's a list of people who give a shit if you "break" your own single player experience:

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

For some reason I'm not surprised the Wii U is selling enough to cause problems on the network. The PS4 and Xbox One only have tech demos for games at the moment unless someone is looking at indie titles.

Too bad I haven't touched either my 3ds or PS Vita for months. PC has been making a serious comeback.

With more games being released on the U the more I want it and I've decided into getting a premium model seeing as how the upgrade costs to my current rig outweigh that of a Wii U and games and possible 3DS games which I'd say is good because to me it seems like a nice deal breaker.

 

[Yopaz]

I wonder if you'd sing the same tune if you could only play through diablo 2 once and had to delete everything if you wanted to have another go or if the shared stash in path of exile is now pay-only or if you lose all of your unlocked whatevers in call of duty if you restart the story mode.
Hell I can't even come up with proper analogies to this, there's really nothing else that has such a terrible "feature" so deeply ingrained in its guts and still gets away with it with no criticism for it.

Quality of life features are pretty vital to me and restarting a grindy game with a whole world of a metagame to build up to without losing all of that progress is as basic as it gets.

Sure, it's not a good thing that you can't restart your game without deleting your game, but Pokebank doesn't change that nor does it make Pokebank a vital feature. Getting to restart your game and to keep multiple saves is a great feature. It's still NOT VITAL for any definition of vital. By any means keep overreacting, but do not adjust definitions to justify whining.

Vital means you need it. So far it hasn't been needed and people have been getting on fine. Yes "It's been that way for so long" is no defence, but "It's not needed to play the game nor has it been needed in the last decade" is a DIRECT contradiction to "It's vital". The appendix is a nice organ to have, but we can still live just fine without it while heart and lungs are vital organs that we can't live without.

Also it might be a paywall, but is 5 dollars for a 365 day service really that big a deal? I've seen coffee shops that sell coffee at higher prices than that and you know what? They are the majority around here. I'm not arguing that Nintendo is doing the right thing or that they should just delay the feature all I am saying is that it's

NOT VITAL for any known definition of vital

Now you might still disagree with me on that so I am asking you kindly now to find a definition of vital that supports your point, cite your source and explain how being able to transfer your last gen Pokemon team fits that definition of vital.

If you can't do that I will keep assuming that you are overreacting and simply ignore you from that point on. Good luck.

Edit: I also can't help noticing you're changing the subject here. This was about Pokemon Bank not about multiple files or any other feature that needs work or should have been in X and Y. Please try to stay on topic the next time.

 

[MorganL4]

I suspect that they might be using that as an excuse to push back release to polish it more, because the worst possible thing for the name would be to have Pokemon Bank shit the bed and delete dozens, if not hundreds, even thousands of pokemon from each player that the player spent hours hatching and training individually. I have no real evidence for it, but just a hunch.

It certainly seems odd that they couldn't solve the problem sooner by adding more servers if high traffic is the problem. There wouldn't be much shame in them just admitting it's not finished/polished enough, but that's not how businesses work I suppose. Everything has to be someone else's fault.

This is Japan we are talking about..... There are BIG cultural issues with admitting you F'ed up. Admitting you were wrong, or having done something dishonorable is almost grounds for termination..... Like most people, the Japanese like not getting fired. As such, their press releases will always be couched in a certain amount of subtext. Hell, the Emperor of Japan NEVER admitted that they lost WW2, even AFTER the nukes.

 

[Hero of Lime]

This sucks, but I've been able to get a Reshiram, an Oshawott, Snivy, and Cyndaquil from the GTS so I guess I can wait a little longer. I'll probably breed these guys to get other starters and Pokemon that would otherwise be hard to get.

Though I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to launch Pokemon Bank in Japan on Christmas Day? Seriously, considering Nintendo has been pushing digital releases, you would think they would be more ready to handle huge online downloads. It should have been released on the 20th before the huge Christmas day traffic.

 

[Roxas1359]

Though I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to launch Pokemon Bank in Japan on Christmas Day?

Christmas in Japan is just a regular day in Japan. Workers don't get the day off on Christmas as it's still relatively new in the country, and it's close to the actual main holiday in Japan, New Years.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Though I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to launch Pokemon Bank in Japan on Christmas Day?

Christmas in Japan is just a regular day in Japan. Workers don't get the day off on Christmas as it's still relatively new in the country, and it's close to the actual main holiday in Japan, New Years.

I understand, problem is, there would be so many westerners who were celebrating Christmas who ended up putting the extreme pressure on the eshop too. Unfortuntately the servers couldn't handle all the Japanese players downloading Pokemon Bank, along with everyone else doing digital downloads and Nintendo network updates. I hope everything gets resolved soon. :/

 

[Roxas1359]

I understand, problem is, there would be so many westerners who were celebrating Christmas who ended up putting the extreme pressure on the eshop too. Unfortuntately the servers couldn't handle all the Japanese players downloading Pokemon Bank, along with everyone else doing digital downloads and Nintendo network updates. I hope everything gets resolved soon. :/

In all honesty this was Nintendo's fault for not anticipating this, because it should have been obvious that something like this would happen. More than anything this will hopefully get Nintendo to put more power into their servers and their online in general.

 

[BooTsPs3]

I wonder if you'd sing the same tune if you could only play through diablo 2 once and had to delete everything if you wanted to have another go or if the shared stash in path of exile is now pay-only or if you lose all of your unlocked whatevers in call of duty if you restart the story mode.
Hell I can't even come up with proper analogies to this, there's really nothing else that has such a terrible "feature" so deeply ingrained in its guts and still gets away with it with no criticism for it.

Quality of life features are pretty vital to me and restarting a grindy game with a whole world of a metagame to build up to without losing all of that progress is as basic as it gets.

Sure, it's not a good thing that you can't restart your game without deleting your game, but Pokebank doesn't change that nor does it make Pokebank a vital feature. Getting to restart your game and to keep multiple saves is a great feature. It's still NOT VITAL for any definition of vital. By any means keep overreacting, but do not adjust definitions to justify whining.

Vital means you need it. So far it hasn't been needed and people have been getting on fine. Yes "It's been that way for so long" is no defence, but "It's not needed to play the game nor has it been needed in the last decade" is a DIRECT contradiction to "It's vital". The appendix is a nice organ to have, but we can still live just fine without it while heart and lungs are vital organs that we can't live without.

Also it might be a paywall, but is 5 dollars for a 365 day service really that big a deal? I've seen coffee shops that sell coffee at higher prices than that and you know what? They are the majority around here. I'm not arguing that Nintendo is doing the right thing or that they should just delay the feature all I am saying is that it's

Pokebank does change that. Upload pokemon to bank. Reset save file, download them back to game. No need for a second game and hours of time trading.

It is a vital feature for anyone at all interested in the competitive scene of pokemon. And that's no small number. The game is extremely limited now due to not having a ton of pokemon, and more importantly, nobody wants to go through weeks of breeding and training pokes they already have in gen V, so even those you can still get in gen VI are less usable.

$5 is $5 more than it should cost. It's been free every other gen. Not to mention the game already has a RRP that's ?5 (possibly more in other regions) higher than standard 3ds games. And while you could argue that there is a free trial, what about when i play through black or diamond or ruby again? I don't get my pokemon to current gen without paying.

Look you can put this any way you want. But this feature is massively important to a huge number of players. It is "vital" to their enjoyment of this game. And it was fucked up. Hugely. There shouldn't have been a wait to begin with. There shouldn't have been a cost to begin with. Now here we are, 27th of december, with no pokebank due to a problem that a fucking 12 year old would have seen coming.

 

[Dragonbums]

Pokebank does change that. Upload pokemon to bank. Reset save file, download them back to game. No need for a second game and hours of time trading.

Similarly they can also block access of future Pokebank features until you beat the game. Just like they've done for all the other transfer messages.

It is a vital feature for anyone at all interested in the competitive scene of pokemon.

As someone who is in the competitive scene herself, I can tell your right now that it's a bonus, but not vital. I have been battling competitively even now without the use of Pokebank, and already you have crybabies complaining about us either through comments in Pokemon or forums.

This is especially trure if your talking about IV training where even the majority of competitive players never bothered with it. I for one didn't and only the most insanely dedicated trainers wracked their hair out over it. Most of my competitive teams now aren't as good as my EV/IV bred team, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that other people are going to simply rebreed their teams to be even better now that IV training isn't exclusive to the insane.

The game is extremely limited now due to not having a ton of pokemon, and more importantly, nobody wants to go through weeks of breeding and training pokes they already have in gen V, so even those you can still get in gen VI are less usable.

For your first point, the amount of Pokemon you can only get with Pokebank is small compared to the Pokemon you can get through friend safaris and trading online even now.

$5 is $5 more than it should cost. It's been free every other gen.

It was only free if you were damn lucky. Some people were fortunate to have siblings with a handheld, or friends willing to loan it to them for a day or so to they can transfer all of their Pokemon. Others however were stuck behind basically a paywall of $100.00 or more because you need a second DS system to transfer all of your Pokemon. $5.00 a year for a service that will be continous long after X and Y is far from a bad deal.

And while you could argue that there is a free trial, what about when i play through black or diamond or ruby again? I don't get my pokemon to current gen without paying.

Well for one, if your playing Ruby and Sapphire, you would have to transport the game to either B/W B2/W2 because the transfer from Pokebank only works on those games.
Secondly, if you saw yourself replaying games again, then sorry but you have to pay for the $5.00 a year service. Not that it should matter all that much considering how by that time the wonder trade and extension the GTS center will be flooded with those same Pokemon anyway.

Look you can put this any way you want. But this feature is massively important to a huge number of players. It is "vital" to their enjoyment of this game. And it was fucked up. Hugely. There shouldn't have been a wait to begin with. There shouldn't have been a cost to begin with. Now here we are, 27th of december, with no pokebank due to a problem that a fucking 12 year old would have seen coming.

Except that many people have been having a lot of fun in Pokemon X and Y without this "vital" feature. Which means it's not really "vital" as you make it out to be.
They didn't do a huge fuck up. They just pulled it for a couple of days to fix kinks and relieve server load which was horribly bad even for those lucky ones that got to use it.
There will be a cost because this is a service that will be there for Pokemon eternity. Servers still cost money. I don't see nearly this amount of crying when Sony forced all users to pay for PS+ just to use online multiplayer.
There has to be a wait to begin with because the last thing anyone wants is a service that eradicates your Pokemon on accident. I'd rather have long server loads than a server that can't even store data properly.
And lets say that it was out on day one? Do you honestly think you would get to use it day one? Just like the old transferring method you would have to wait until after you beat the game to use it anyway.

 

[Dragonbums]

I understand, problem is, there would be so many westerners who were celebrating Christmas who ended up putting the extreme pressure on the eshop too. Unfortuntately the servers couldn't handle all the Japanese players downloading Pokemon Bank, along with everyone else doing digital downloads and Nintendo network updates. I hope everything gets resolved soon. :/

In all honesty this was Nintendo's fault for not anticipating this, because it should have been obvious that something like this would happen. More than anything this will hopefully get Nintendo to put more power into their servers and their online in general.

Yet this was just for Japan only. I can understand server overload, but Christmas must of been a ***** of one region played a huge part in slogging down servers on holidays.

While you are definitely right that it should let Nintendo know to focus more on server space, it was also a good beta test to see how well the system was at catching hacks( it has kinks to iron out) so they are probably going to withhold it even longer to fix that.

 

[Roxas1359]

Yet this was just for Japan only. I can understand server overload, but Christmas must of been a ***** of one region played a huge part in slogging down servers on holidays.

Thing is if Nintendo is smart then they have separate servers based on region, and again Christmas is not popular in Japan in the slightest. Literally less than 5% of the population in Japan actually celebrates Christmas so Christmas shouldn't be used as to why the servers are overloaded for them, and those that do celebrate don't always give gifts because New Year's Day is when gifts are given in Japan. Not to mention that you have to think about how many copies of X and Y have sold, so far only 5.5 million worldwide, and if a small number like that were to completely crash the eShop system then Nintendo needs to improve their servers, especially since they are actually pushing for things to go more digital nowadays actually. If Nintendo doesn't have the servers separate based on regions then that is very very concerning and they definitely need a slap in the face. Although if that were the case then that'd explain why the Wii's online, except for Mario Kart Wii, was bad. >.>

While you are definitely right that it should let Nintendo know to focus more on server space, it was also a good beta test to see how well the system was at catching hacks( it has kinks to iron out) so they are probably going to withhold it even longer to fix that.

Really I don't see how they couldn't have done beta testing of their own through this time, I mean they could easily simulate similar amounts of large traffic that could cause crashes. Heck with how easy it is to hack Pokemon they could have also tested the system catching hacked Pokemon as well really.

 

[Dragonbums]

Yet this was just for Japan only. I can understand server overload, but Christmas must of been a ***** of one region played a huge part in slogging down servers on holidays.

Thing is if Nintendo is smart then they have separate servers based on region, and again Christmas is not popular in Japan in the slightest. Literally less than 5% of the population in Japan actually celebrates Christmas so Christmas shouldn't be used as to why the servers are overloaded for them. If Nintendo doesn't have the servers separate based on regions then that is very very concerning and they definitely need a slap in the face. Although if that were the case then that'd explain why the Wii's online, except for Mario Kart Wii, was bad. >.>

While you are definitely right that it should let Nintendo know to focus more on server space, it was also a good beta test to see how well the system was at catching hacks( it has kinks to iron out) so they are probably going to withhold it even longer to fix that.

Really I don't see how they couldn't have done beta testing of their own through this time, I mean they could easily simulate similar amounts of large traffic that could cause crashes. Heck with how easy it is to hack Pokemon they could have also tested the system catching hacked Pokemon as well really.

The problem with hacked Pokemon is that most players don't hack for unbelievable stat Pokemon like pikachus with 300 speed stat at lvl. 50 . They hack Pokemon that are still believable in terms of what they can attain stat wise. Which makes it that much harder to track down. At most these hacks are shinies, clones, and Pokemon with perfect IVs which aren't exactly ILLEGAL, but for some they should be impossible to obtain. The biggest issue honestly are the legendary hacks with perfect IV's, and movesets, and all sorts of annoying things like that.

As for server space, well that's all on them really.
I guess they never expected that sort of influx. Especially with the Wii U's ( they were all sold out in my area)