Details about Pokémon Home, Nintendo’s upcoming replacement to Pokémon Bank, have finally been revealed after being speculated about for months. In essence, this is how Trainers are meant to move their teams around between games, trade them with other players, and gain access to functions for competitive play. Nintendo has been teasing the new premium service for a while now, and we finally have all of the details.
Pokémon Home has two pricing tiers. The basic version is pretty useless all things considered. With no integration with other tools like the Pokémon Bank, it only really acts as a way to participate in room trades and deposit around 30 Pokémon. You can’t transfer between versions, there’s no ability to host Room Trades and there’s one really crippling function.
Trading in Pokémon has always been on a bit of an honor system, but with the Pokémon Bank and room trades, Nintendo wanted to give players the ability to look at the deeper stats of what they were trading for. This is crucial for competitive players who need the optimum IVs and EVs for their strategies to work well. On the free tier, you won’t be able to use the judge function, which would allow trainers to see the stats of the monster they’re trading for. Having that locked behind a paywall is a clever, but definitely going-to-be-hated way for Nintendo to make more money.
The premium model has a bit of bad news, as it’s going to be a more pricey addon for hardcore fans. With Pokémon Bank at $5 a year, expect to pay a bit more for Pokémon Home. The full suite is much more expensive, with the premium service will cost $3 a month, $4.99 for three months, or $15.99 for a full year.
The system is also being expanded for collectors, adding more features around the National Dex that hardcore fans have always been striving to build. Pokémon deposited in Boxes in Pokémon Home will be registered to the National Pokédex, and Pokémon that Mega Evolve or Gigantamax will have these forms registered also.
One would think that The Pokemon Company and Game Freak would want to win back players who were soured by the lackluster singleplayer and other issues of Pokémon Sword and Shield by adding new features to related services, but I guess not. It looks like the developer and publisher are counting more and more on the popularity of the brand and the incoming DLC expansions to bounce them back. Although considering the strength of sales numbers for Pokémon Sword and Shield, I kind of doubt they care at all.
At launch, Pokémon Home will support Pokémon Sword, Pokémon Shield, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! with support for Pokémon GO being added at a future date. Check below for the full rundown of all of the new features within the two tiers.
Image Credit: Nintendo
