Pokemon Bank was initially released back in late 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS as a way to store your Pokemon from Generation V upward, as well as the Virtual Console releases of the older games, in one location. Things have gotten a bit more complicated with the release of the Nintendo Switch and the Pokemon Let’s Go games, the upcoming Pokemon Sword and Shield, and even Pokemon Go, so now The Pokemon Company has announced a successor to Pokemon Bank known as Pokemon Home.
The Pokemon Company held a press conference last night that brought us many different announcements, including Pokemon Sleep. That press conference also revealed Pokemon Home for the first time as well, which looks to be the end all be all for connecting your Pokemon games.
Like Pokemon Bank, Pokemon Home will be a cloud based service that will allow you to store your Pokemon in one location. This time though, the app will not be exclusive to say the Nintendo 3DS, but instead will be available for both Nintendo Switch and mobile devices.
You will be able to transfer your Pokemon from Pokemon Bank over to Pokemon Home as a way to obtain your Nintendo 3DS Pokemon, as well as transfer between the two Pokemon Let’s Go games, Pokemon Sword and Shield, and Pokemon Go itself.
From the above image released through the press conference, it appears Pokemon will be a one way trip to Pokemon Home from everything except for Pokemon Sword and Shield, which will be able to both get and send Pokemon to Home from it. However, Pokemon Home is not slated to released until early 2020, so it will not be available at the launch of Pokemon Sword and Shield later this year.
It was also stated that you will be able to trade via Pokemon Home as well, though they did not reveal how exactly that will work at this time.
