Pokemon Home Launches On Nintendo Switch, Android And iPhone

The Pokemon series has always been about catching them all. In order to do that, especially now that there are so many Pokemon to collect, you’ll have to do your fair share of trading with friends and transferring from older games. In earlier iterations, you would be able to do this using either a cable or one of the DS’s transfer methods. For Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, this will now come in the form of a new service called Pokemon Home.

Pokemon Home is a cloud service that allows users to store their Pokemon online from multiple games. Users can access the Pokemon Home application from their Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. From there, players can move Pokemon from one game to another, giving access to Pokemon in newer games that may not be available otherwise.

The free version of the service will allow users to store up to 30 Pokemon in the cloud but will not allow players to transfer Pokemon out of Pokemon Bank. The service will also feature a premium version that will cost $2.99 a month, with options to pay $4.99 for three months or $15.99 for a year. The premium versions of Pokemon Bank and Poke Transporter will be available for free until March 12, reports The Verge.

The Premium version allows for a total of 6,000 Pokemon to be stored, with the ability to transfer from Pokemon Bank, Room Trades, and a larger amount of Pokemon to be placed in the GTS and Wonder Box at the same time. Currently, it supports Pokemon Sword, Pokemon Shield, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee!, and the Nintendo 3DS’s Pokemon Bank service. Support for Pokemon Go is coming in the future, giving access to yet another source of new and exclusive Pokemon.

Pokemon Bank allows users to store and move Pokemon between multiple titles, similar to how Pokemon Home works. This effectively lets users transfer and store Pokemon from older titles. If a player has been diligent in transferring their Pokemon between games as new ones have been released, it is possible to move Pokemon from as far back as the first game onto Pokemon Home, then move them onto Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield. Using the available sources for transferring, it will be possible to move all of the characters into the cloud service. Whether the newest game will allow for the use of all of them has not yet been announced.