News: Details on Pokémon HOME announced

[Sheep]

Looks like it will have both a free and Premium Plan. Thoughts on this?

 

[icycatelf]

It's cool that they're making Pokémon Bank free for a limited time (though I still think it's incredibly lame that we ever had to pay to transfer our Pokémon in the first place), but it's unfortunate for those of us that recently renewed our Bank Pass in light of Pokémon Home's upcoming release. :/

 

[pkmin3033]

This is pretty disgusting. The features in the so-called "premium" plan are features that have been available in previous generations for free, and limiting the number of Pokemon you can deposit to that extent is a pretty scummy move. Considering how cheap Pokemon Bank was for a year as well, this is obscenely expensive. I don't know where they get off calling these "great features" when all they've done is take a bunch of features from core Pokemon games - and now I see the reason why SnS' online was so absolutely terrible; it was to provide incentive to shell out for this ripoff - and provide a ridiculously stripped-down version of Pokemon Bank for free that will be absolutely useless to the intended audience of people who have a history with the franchise and a desire to transfer their old Pokemon to newer titles.

This is so anti-consumer it's mind-boggling...and of course, Game Freak will get away with it. If Mario Kart can get away with gambling on smartphones, Pokemon can get away with "premium" storage services that we got last generation for a fraction of the price. Disgraceful.

And so the move to make Pokemon a franchise that shakes you down for everything it can continues onwards. First we pay half again the price for a game with half the content (with the rest being put into DLC, making it effectively double the price for the same amount of content if you buy the DLC) and now we pay three times the price for the same storage service plus the convenience of online features that they replaced with a rubbish password system that doesn't work as intended in the main games.

This is the real reason they won't put every Pokemon into the games, too - it's to keep people shelling out for this extortionate service. After all, if you CAN'T keep everything on your current games, you don't have much choice in the matter if you don't want them on your old games, do you? They can justify the higher price with the need to store Pokemon, but that is a need they themselves created by not putting every Pokemon into the game! Just buying a month or whatever so you can transfer your Pokemon over to SnS isn't an option. Making Pokemon Bank free for a month is a very clever move to push people to move their Pokemon whilst it's "free" to do so, too.

But let's all be happy that Game Freak are doing such a great job! Please be excited for more updates!

 

[Sheep]

yeah idk :x I was fairly excited for home but knowing we used to have all the mons and gts included in a 40 (USD, excluding tax) 3ds game is a bummer. now we pay 60 for the base game, + 30 for dlc including 200 more pokémon, and then 15/year for nat dex/gts and that's just....ouch.

nevermind - I know those are free. still, but the high price of the paid plan in home to begin is because of 'features' like gts and national dex that were free in previous games. so if I want to store my pokémon (since 30 slots is not nearly enough for many people....), i'd have to be willing to pay that obscene price.

 

[Benermerut]

Dawn has summed up my feelings pretty much exactly.
This is the worst case scenario that a lot of people were predicting would happen.

 

[colours]

okay well, this is definitely shit. im just going to be flat out honest.

the DLC? i don't mind paying for. i don't mind paying for the DLC because this is something that should've been done a LONG time ago that Game Freak is honestly slow to catch up on. such is the way of things.... while in a perfect world, Game Freak would just release a complete game from the start, there's profit to be made in increasing the shelf-life of the games, so i guess DLC makes sense. whatever. but this? this is pushing it.

SwSh is already $60 per game. if you've spent $120 on the double pack, this doubly hurts. $30 for the DLC, and now, if you want yearly Home, that'd be $16 a year on top of the money that people already pay for Switch online. i'm sorry, this is flat-out ridiculous. if only because paying for Switch online should already come with HOME for free. wouldn't Game freak be making enough money from the SwSh sales and DLC anyway? i guess this isn't too surprising considering they've been inching closer and closer towards full blown corporate greedy attitudes for years now but... yikes. this is them being full-on blatant about it.

i'll be honest: i hate this decision. i really do, just like i feel like NSO doesn't have very much to offer me, either (which is why i barely pay for it, and only monthly if i do). if i ever go for this, im going for the 3-month function becase i'm honest to goodness not paying more than $5 for something i already had before in Bank.

alas, the unfortunate part is that the internet can get angry all it wants. pokemon fans on the internet and pokemon fans who don't actively use social media seem to be vastly different audiences. as long as the latter is satisfied (which seems to be the majority anyway), who cares what a small fraction of the fandom thinks?

 

[Cold Ivory]

I'm confused by some of the responses - the only vital/preexisting feature of Bank that isn't free on Home is the ability to move from past gens. The GTS is free, the National Dex is free (as are the 200 pokemon reappearing later this year- no DLC required). I suppose if you planned on moving everything from bank/previous gens to Home, that's 10 extra a year, but given the still-limited applicability of approx 300 mons, it doesn't seem like something many vocal people were going to do anyway.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the Wonder Box. Should make getting rid of breedjects less tedious.

 

[Lumina]

imagine only being able to store 30 mons in the free version. it may as well be zero for how useful that is

 

[Palamon]

15.99 TO STORE OVER 6,000 MONS? YEAH I DON'T THINK SO, GAME FREAK.

30 for the free version, that's definitely very appalling. Even I'm mad at this, and I don't easily get mad about Pokemon. Holy fucking shit, honestly, at least let us store up to 500 in the free version, is that so much to ask? 30, lol.

 

[Mewtwolover]

Pokémon HOME is piece of crap but at least it can offer some entertainment, people will falsely believe that national dex is back and buy the premium subscription in order to transfer all their pokémon from USUM to SwSh but it will fail and all their pokémon that aren't in Galar dex will be stuck in HOME, this causes outrage in social media. What makes it even worse is that the free version of HOME has 30 pokémon limit so cancelling the premium subscription means losing your pokémon if you have more than 30 pokémon in HOME.

 

[bobandbill]

I am not impressed, frankly.

The price is 3x+ higher than Bank was. While mobile usage is admittedly neat, there's not much else that's really new to Bank, bar ability to communicate with LGPE/SwSh/eventually GO (and that's by design, and ignoring the ~10-15 games Bank can communicate with...), some lame looking sticker thing, and stuff that was/is in the main series games like GTS and the Judge feature.

Free is neat until you see you can't use Bank with it in normal circumstances, and you can only hold 30 Pokemon at once. Combine that with the inability to put over half the nat dex into SwSh when Home launches (and 200+ still unavailable after DLC hits)... I certainly have more than 30 pokes sitting in Bank that I can't move to SwSh. So I will have to pay down the track if I don't want them to stay in an effectively dead app? Bleh.

 

[Flowerchild]

wow i hate this so much

even if i personally have 0 interest in the dlc due to disliking swsh for other reasons than dexit, i actually thought it was a step forward in pro consumer behavior compared to full priced third versions. but this... one step forward and two steps back

 

[Cherrim]

As a staunch SwSh defender (because I'm a casual player)... even I can't defend this choice.

I could understand if this was $5~10/year. That's reasonable enough. Still kinda sucks but given the amount of space and the connectivity across many games, I could see myself paying that the years I expect to be playing Pokémon and the features are pretty cool. But nearly a third the base cost of the game? No way.

But also? Pokémon Company is literally drowning in cash. They don't need to wring their players for every last penny. The least they could do is eat some of the cost of this, assuming they aren't just marking up what it costs to run this by 1000000%, to build back some goodwill with players. Make the free version functional for players looking to futureproof their past Pokémon or make the paid version WAY cheaper. (Hell, they could even mark it down for the first year or two and then jack up prices if they wanna be scummy anyway—most people would stop caring or paying attention by then anyway lmao.)

As it is now, the costs to fully participate in this gen are, in pre-tax US dollars:
- $60 game
- $30 DLC
- $20 online / year
- $16 home / year
= $126

...and that's just ridiculous.

I can get by just fine without using Home. I'd been hoping to subscribe so that I didn't have to worry about my box space in Sword, but I'll just suck it up and deal with it. I don't see a reason to give them money for this. They don't need it.

 

[Iceshadow3317]

God this is terrible. I thought Pokemon Home was going to be part of the Online Service. What the hell is the point of a paid subscription if you are not going to include stuff.... not only do we have to have online service. We also have to pay 15 more just for access of stuff that was once free. That is 35 a year, yes, but that is 2 months of other paid services that include EVERYTHING, not only that, but I just wasted money to renew Poke Bank because I thought it would be needed.

This is freaking stupid and I defended the DLC.

 

[Venonat in Space]

Okay, after reading everyone's opinion, I have no choice but...to AGREE! I didn't read the whole article clearly at first but this is just getting out of hand now that I fully understand it thanks to everyone here. Also, I don't get the Nintendo Online at my house cause of the servers at my house, I don't have a smartphone...what's the point? And I defended the DLC too, but this money stuff smh. I can't even get behind it! It kills me to see a great franchise like Pokemon go down the tubes. I'm really sorry Gamefreak, but I can't stan Sword and Shield anymore...still gonna play the DLC since I stupidly already paid for it. Heck, i'm starting to hate Klara now for the sole fact she's in Swsh. Time to stan a new gym leader, and I already know who. Everyone i'm stanning Winona from Hoenn. Always liked her better than Klara anyway. Brb, gonna changer my avatar.

 

[Nah]

I'm confused by some of the responses - the only vital/preexisting feature of Bank that isn't free on Home is the ability to move from past gens. The GTS is free, the National Dex is free (as are the 200 pokemon reappearing later this year- no DLC required). I suppose if you planned on moving everything from bank/previous gens to Home, that's 10 extra a year, but given the still-limited applicability of approx 300 mons, it doesn't seem like something many vocal people were going to do anyway.

It's that we basically now have to pay $16 a year for a service that we used to get for $5 a year (Bank). HOME is just a glorified Bank.

It's good that the GTS is free, but the GTS is something that should've been in SwSh to begin with, not via a separate app. Nothing about HOME warrants this increase in price, especially given that the majority of its additional features already exist in SwSh (Wonder Trade, IV Judge, Mystery Gift, etc), especially when you're also going to need to pay for Nintendo Online to make use of it with your SwSh game if you haven't already. It's also only 30 Pokemon that can be stored on the free version, not 300.

 

[Starry Windy]

I have mixed opinions on this. While Pokémon Home seems to have more features than the Bank, the pricing of it is already too steep to my liking, not to mention when I saw the pricing on Pokémon Sword/Shield's Expansion Pass from before. Plus, I've been worrying on extending Pokébank's pass as well. While I begin to warm up on Expansion Pass over time, the announcements of Pokéhome's pricing starts to make me think twice on DLC again. So demanding everything for some $ might not be a good idea, and I hope Game Freak and co. would consider making Pokéhome cheaper, if possible.

 

[scubied]

can't wait...