Pokémon Home is a new service for the Switch and mobile devices that will allow players to transfer Pokémon from older titles and store them on an online server. It was revealed at the Pokémon Press Conference held in Tokyo, where the company together with a partner Kotiota Studio spoke about its upcoming projects. The service is still in development, but is expected to release early 2020; after Pokémon Sword & Shield have hit store shelves this year.
This isn’t the first service to help us rescue our beloved friends trapped on old Pokémon cartridges. PokéBank, an app for the Nintendo DS’ eshop, allowed us to store Pokémon from specific DS and 3DS titles. But it was limited: it was a fiddly process that worked only for the DS/3DS family. Now that Pokémon games have made it to the switch, we need to bring these Pokémon to the new generation. Take a look at this:
By the looks of this graphic, Pokémon Home will be mostly a one-way trip, like PokéBank was. Pokémon from your 3DS titles, PokéBank, Pokémon GO, and Pokémon Let’s Go: Pikachu and Eevee can’t return to their original games once you transfer them. Be aware of that before you go moving your Pokémon around, so that you don’t end up regretting anything. Pokémon Sword & Shield, which are due for release late this year, seem to be the only titles that will allow for back and forth transfers. That said, Pokémon Home will presumably offer two-way transfers on new Pokémon games that come out in the future.
In addition to this, it seems Pokémon Home will also allow players to trade with each other directly. This will certainly make collecting all the Pokémon yet again a lot easier! How many are there these days? That’s all the information we have on Pokémon Home right now, but we’re sure to hear more as we move further into the year.