Here’s everything you need to know about Pokémon HOME
The Pokémon Company has revealed a megaton of information about the upcoming Pokémon HOME service, covering just about everything you need to know… except a firm date.
The major news here is that some features will be available entirely for free. While you won’t be able to transfer from Pokémon Bank without coughing up some change, you can deposit and move up to 30 Pokémon, Wonder Trade up to three Pokémon using the app, and participate in the GTS, all without paying a cent. You can also trade with friends across the world, again, entirely for free. Oh yeah, in case you missed that, the GTS is back too, after its brief holiday from Sword and Shield.
Paying for Premium gets you a lot more, including the ability to transfer from Pokémon Bank, storage for up to 6000 Pokémon, the ability to Wonder Trade 10 Pokémon at a time, and a lot more. You can see the full table of what you can and can’t do without paying below.
Another new feature listed there is “Room Trade,” which by the looks of it is essentially a large-scale Wonder Trade for up to 20 people. You and 19 others will jump into a room, you’ll each put up a Pokémon, and those 20 Pokémon will be randomly distributed across each player in the room. It sounds absolutely crazy, and you can participate (but not host) for free.
Included in Pokémon HOME is also a comprehensive National Dex, both on the Switch app and the mobile app, where you’ll be able to read up on every single Pokémon you’ve caught across all your games, and all their forms — including Megas. The mobile app even has a proper Pokédex-like feature, where you can search by types, abilities, and so much more, and view all the stats, moves, and abilities of all your monsters. Plus, with the mobile app, you’ll be able to redeem Mystery Gifts for Sword and Shield without ever having to turn your Switch on. Neat!
And now we get to the sticky part: the price. Coming in at $24.95 AUD per year, it’s a little bit more than Bank’s $8 AUD — but you do get a whole lot more bang for your buck, too. There’s other options for payment terms, as you’ll see in the table below, but paying for the full year is definitely the best value.
| 30 days | 90 days | 365 days | |
| eShop Price | $4.49 (AUD) | $7.99 (AUD) | $24.99 |
The only thing we don’t know about HOME is exactly when it’s launching. The Pokémon Company says it’ll be out sometime in February, but they’re staying very tight-lipped as to exactly when in February that will be. It could be next week, or it could be a month from now. We also don’t know when Pokémon GO integration is coming — but we do know it won’t be there at launch, thanks to this endlessly confusing and entertaining infographic.
We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop when more information becomes available.
Hmm when it says ‘deposit and move’ does that mean how much you can place into Pokemon Home at once? Or is that how much storage we get without premium. If the former is true, then most of us probably only require the one month payment to do the heavy transferring from pokebank anyway and still have access to most of the important features. This could wither be really decent, or really bad depending what they mean.
$25?! God Almighty. They are having an absolute laugh. This is so ridiculous that it doesn’t even warrant entertaining. We’re talking about paying a ridiculous annual fee for storing mere megabytes, if that! This should have been included as part of NSO. It’s amazing how generous Nintendo were during the Wii U era, when things were bleak, and yet so shamelessly greedy now.
Even the Pokédex 3D Pro app on 3DS, which was arguably quite expensive, costs less than this, but at least the Dex was a one-time purchase! And what could possibly warrant charging nearly 4x more for Home than Bank?
Between this and the DLC, Game Freak have pretty much killed any goodwill and loyalty to the brand that I have had for over 20 years. I don’t buy both versions of what amounts to the same game year in and year out (with the console game price premium from Let’s Go onwards) to have them gyrate DLC in my face in addition to that. Nope. You can’t have it both ways.
I am in utter disbelief at the drastic downward trajectory of the Pokémon main series games in the space of a single generation. If this is what Gen 8 is going to look like moving forward, then I don’t want to stick around for Gen 9. The only thing that Game Freak can do to redeem themselves at this point is issue complete versions of Sword/Shield by year’s end with the DLC content on cartridge, but given Nintendo’s track record, I am not optimistic.