XY Pokémon Bank: Cloud Storage for Pokémon

Drohn

Wild War Dance
Member
Pokémon Bank has been confirmed to allow players to store their Pokémon on the Internet (cloud storage) as well as transferring them from previous generations! It allows up to 3000 Pokémon to be stored. It has a built in search function to keep track of the Pokémon that are saved.

It's a paid for service; since it requires managing and maintenance there is an annual fee.


What are your opinions on this new feature?


Now that Pokémon Bank is released in some countries, we would like to remind you that the purpose of this thread is still to discuss the Pokémon Bank feature, not to set up trades or casual discuss which Pokémon you have obtained or brought over via Bank. We have a home for X/Y trading in our X/Y Wi-Fi forum, and casual discussion is welcome in the PokéBeach chat.
 

Blob55

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Great... I don't actually OWN Pokémon BW or BW2, as I was banking (pun...) on XY being like a fresh start. I guess it's a big no to the RSE remakes now.

Also, it probably means that distribution of Pokémon will be even worse than in BW, as GF want everyone to have the 5th gen games, so they can save money on needed remakes.

You STILL can't gen Unown in the 5th gen games BTW.
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
Member
This is something I think the series has needed for a while now, I know that storage apps are nothing new, but having a standardized handheld app that can move around entire boxes between games without trading is completely amazing. The only thing that really bothers me about this is having to pay to transfer Pokemon from 5th gen (which I'm still not 100% clear on), and the free trial won't really help me with that because I transfer my Pokemon as needed instead of all at once.

Blob55 said:
Great... I don't actually OWN Pokémon BW or BW2, as I was banking (pun...) on XY being like a fresh start. I guess it's a big no to the RSE remakes now.

Also, it probably means that distribution of Pokémon will be even worse than in BW, as GF want everyone to have the 5th gen games, so they can save money on needed remakes.

You STILL can't gen Unown in the 5th gen games BTW.

HGSS were released despite all of the Pokemon in that game already being available by transferring from 3rd gen. By no means are RSE remakes disconfirmed. I do think they'll try to push sales of the 5th gen games, though, especially early on before we start getting more games and such.
 

Card Slinger J

Aspiring Trainer
Member
What I'm curious about in regards to Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter is whether or not If you have to pay a fee for each individual Pokemon you transfer over from Gen V to Gen VI with this app device or If it's $5 per 6 Pokemon you transfer since in the Japanese version it costs 500 yen to transfer your Gen V Pokemon over to Gen VI. Pokemon Direct didn't give enough specific details in regards to that and I'm wondering If we're going to have to wait when Pokemon X and Y are released when we'll find out more on how Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter works. I already know alot of Pokemon fans aren't too happy about this but just be thankful that Game Freak went out of their way to do this for us, I know I am.

Some people are wondering If you stop paying the fee for Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter to transfer Pokemon from the previous games then what are the consequences behind it? Does your transferred Pokemon corrupt your save file or do they disappear automatically? Are you then permanently banned from transferring Pokemon over altogether unless you start a new save file in X and Y? There's still so many questions left unanswered on this which I hope will be resolved in the next several months. It seems like the people who are complaining about Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter in X and Y are the same people who complain about DLC in video games. With DLC you're paying extra money for content that's already included in the actual game, but with Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter the Pokemon you're sending over to X and Y aren't already in the game. There's a difference.
 

Frezgle

Winged Death
Member
They way they explained it, it was just an annual fee for the entire Bank + transfer service. A $5 annual fee with a free trial period, at that. Very reasonable. $5 per transfer wouldn't make any sense; even the most desperate wouldn't use it.

And... well, if you stop your service, I really doubt they'd just delete your Pokemon or have it corrupt your file (how would that even work?). Pokemon has always been pretty lenient with its services, so I imagine you'd get at least a 30-day period and plenty of warning to retrieve them. They might even continue to store them indefinitely, but only let you take them out, and not put any more back in.
 

Blob55

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Can someone do a list of how many Pokémon in gen 1-5 are available in XY? I'm only counting the ones that have been seen in-game, or have been featured or used in battles, like Ampharos and Snorlax in PokéMonAmi. That way it'll be easier for me to know how many mon with perfect IVs/shinies I need to trade to get all mon that aren't in XY.

After all, no-one will trade their HGSS -> BW/2 -> XY Ho-Oh for a common Talonflame that ISN'T perfect, or a Turtwig for a Bulbasaur. ;_;
 

Frezgle

Winged Death
Member
Card Slinger J said:
The annual fee is a yearly fee instead of a monthly fee like Netflix and Hulu correct?

"Annual" means "once a year", so yup. Even people on low budgets can afford that. It's pretty much like getting a soda and a snack lol.
I wonder if you'll be able to do other things with this than what we've seen... Mass-trades, perhaps? Special unlockables for storing a certain number of Pokemon? I'd be surprised if it was just storage and nothing else.
 

Card Slinger J

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Also what If you get disconnected from the Internet in the middle of using Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter, does your old Pokemon data from Gen V get permanently deleted or do they just get sent back to your Pokemon Black/White and Black 2/White 2 game cartridges? Sometimes I temporarily get disconnected from the Internet when my sister is doing her homework on her laptop so that's the big reason why I'm asking this. I didn't think you were going to quote the post I deleted so I apologize.
 

Frezgle

Winged Death
Member
Almost every data transfer system I can think of has fail-safes for that type of situation. When you "send" data, you're not really physically moving it, you're either copying it to another location, or copying it to another location and then deleting it from its original location. When the transfer completes, a check is done to verify that the data was received in full on the receiving end, and then a confirmation is sent back so that it can be deleted (in the case of "moving", which is what Pokemon Bank would use). Actually, this is also often done with every packet, or individual chunks of data. Considering this is an internet-based service I imagine it would work that way, but that's beside the point!
Anyway, if the check fails because the data is incomplete on the receiving end or simply wasn't able to go anywhere at all, it just stays where it is.
 

Teal

黄前さん らしい ね
Member
I'll probably get it at some point since it is POKÉMON but I don't see any need for this personally (= for ME).
 

Frezgle

Winged Death
Member
The Official Site said:
Note: You may find yourself unable to use Pokémon Bank or Poké Transporter to deposit any Pokémon created illegally by software unauthorized by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo into your online Boxes, or to move these Pokémon between online Boxes.

Nope! And since the 3DS has so far shown itself to be very difficult to hack, we might see a cheat-free generation, at least for a while.
 

Card Slinger J

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Yeah until someone acquires the technology for a 3DS ROM to play Nintendo 3DS games on an emulator which isn't that far off in the future. Can you imagine playing Pokemon X and Y on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop instead of on your 3DS?
 

Drokas

Who cares?
Member
Card Slinger J said:
It seems like the people who are complaining about Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter in X and Y are the same people who complain about DLC in video games. With DLC you're paying extra money for content that's already included in the actual game, but with Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter the Pokemon you're sending over to X and Y aren't already in the game. There's a difference.

Actually, no. DLC content gets stored in your SD Card, so even if you start your game all over, it is still there. The benefit from DLC is that they can make and release new content that wasn't initially in the game. Not only content but patches for the game as well. Events, however, "unlock" the data included in the game that you can't get through normal game-play.

The game Style Savvy: Trendsetters/New Style Boutique was released in 2012 and they still release free new patches and clothes over DLC (e.g., celebrating the release of Animal Crossing with a themed mini-collection).
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
Member
Card Slinger J said:
It seems like the people who are complaining about Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter in X and Y are the same people who complain about DLC in video games. With DLC you're paying extra money for content that's already included in the actual game, but with Pokemon Bank/Poke Transporter the Pokemon you're sending over to X and Y aren't already in the game. There's a difference.

Not true, DLC is an add on that is tied to the game it's associated with. This can work with any copy of XY (and presumably any future 6th gen game). Paying money for content that's already in the game is something that's not specific to DLC, and even if it was, by that logic this would be DLC, as you're paying for transfer services that were free in past games. So it's reasonable to pay that $5 a year for the cloud storage services, yes, but not transfers. I really wish they'd have made a dumbed down version of the app that does transfers only and is free, then there'd be absolutely no reason to complain.
 

TomoEGoto

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I am very iffy on the matter. I understand that it costs to maintain servers and whatnot, but why couldn't it have been like...

You CAN retrieve Pokemon from anywhere, but you need to pay the annual fee.

You can still use the service to import Pokemon, but it's limited to your 3DS (as software has been) which means if you lose your 3DS, you lose your Pokemon indefinitely.

And I shouldn't have to buy an app to use one that I really wanted.
I don't really want to pay an annual fee just to transfer Pokemon because the apps can't be bought separate.

So in conclusion, when it comes out to the West (which date hasn't been announced that I've known) I'll have to be swift on my feet to utilize the trial as I see fit and that means that I can't hunt on BW/2 once the trial ends because then I won't be able to transfer any shinies that I find.

Yeah I can pay the annual fee and all, but I would've liked it more if it was like the Pokemon Box from GCN only with optional online services.
 

Ohman177

Aspiring Trainer
Member
TomoEGoto said:
I am very iffy on the matter. I understand that it costs to maintain servers and whatnot, but why couldn't it have been like...

You CAN retrieve Pokemon from anywhere, but you need to pay the annual fee.

You can still use the service to import Pokemon, but it's limited to your 3DS (as software has been) which means if you lose your 3DS, you lose your Pokemon indefinitely.

And I shouldn't have to buy an app to use one that I really wanted.
I don't really want to pay an annual fee just to transfer Pokemon because the apps can't be bought separate.

So in conclusion, when it comes out to the West (which date hasn't been announced that I've known) I'll have to be swift on my feet to utilize the trial as I see fit and that means that I can't hunt on BW/2 once the trial ends because then I won't be able to transfer any shinies that I find.

Yeah I can pay the annual fee and all, but I would've liked it more if it was like the Pokemon Box from GCN only with optional online services.

Stop complaining. $5 is not a lot. If you don't want your old pokemon, then don't pay. ALSO, it's uploaded to a cloud. Not the 3ds. If you lose it, you can just get another and sign it with that one.
 

Drohn

Wild War Dance
Member
Ohman177 said:
TomoEGoto said:
I am very iffy on the matter. I understand that it costs to maintain servers and whatnot, but why couldn't it have been like...

You CAN retrieve Pokemon from anywhere, but you need to pay the annual fee.

You can still use the service to import Pokemon, but it's limited to your 3DS (as software has been) which means if you lose your 3DS, you lose your Pokemon indefinitely.

And I shouldn't have to buy an app to use one that I really wanted.
I don't really want to pay an annual fee just to transfer Pokemon because the apps can't be bought separate.

So in conclusion, when it comes out to the West (which date hasn't been announced that I've known) I'll have to be swift on my feet to utilize the trial as I see fit and that means that I can't hunt on BW/2 once the trial ends because then I won't be able to transfer any shinies that I find.

Yeah I can pay the annual fee and all, but I would've liked it more if it was like the Pokemon Box from GCN only with optional online services.

Stop complaining. $5 is not a lot. If you don't want your old pokemon, then don't pay. ALSO, it's uploaded to a cloud. Not the 3ds. If you lose it, you can just get another and sign it with that one.

I think you missed the "why couldn't it have been like..." in his post. He was describing how he wanted it to be if it were free of charge.

I agree with both of you. It's not much to pay 5$ per year if you can afford a 3DS and the games. On the other hand I also would prefer if transferring Pokémon was free.

I'm definitely buying this feature. It will be great if they would keep using it for future generations as well and maybe even allow transferring back and forth between generations. This would require the same conditions to be used as in generation 1 and 2.
 

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
Member
Drohn said:
It will be great if they would keep using it for future generations as well and maybe even allow transferring back and forth between generations. This would require the same conditions to be used as in generation 1 and 2.

I doubt it'll be usable past 6th gen, especially if it's on a new console. There's constant compatibility issues with a new generation of games and a new generation of handhelds, and Game Freak probably considers all of the restrictions too much of a headache to be worth doing. Not to mention that the new gameplay mechanics that have arisen since make things even worse, most notably abilities. Wanna transfer that Sheer Force Makuhita you have to 4th gen? Too bad, Sheer Force doesn't exist in 4th gen so it can never go to your 4th gen games.
 
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