‘Pokemon Bank’ and ‘Pokemon Transporter’ Announced
At the completely logical hour of 4 AM this morning, Nintendo held a special Direct conference dedicated to the upcoming 3DS monstrosities, Pokemon X and Y. A slew of new announcements and revelations were made, but perhaps most importantly, were the revelations of two 3DS apps that will make the lives of Black and White players much easier.
Introducing Pokemon Bank, this app will allow players to hold up to 3000 different Pokemon using cloud storage. Taking the concepts of Pokemon Box, My Pokemon Ranch and the storage feature of Pokemon Stadium to new heights, Bank has more storage than one would ever need. I mean, seriously, cheaters can’t even hack that many characters, (don’t worry hackers, we won’t tell.) Whether or not the game will give rewards for storing certain amounts like the previously mentioned storage apps has yet to be announced.
As a supplemental app for Bank, Pokemon Transporter is designed to give you a head start in filling those 3000 slots by allowing trainers to mass transfer characters from Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 from Bank. Sadly, Diamond, Pearl and Platinum won’t be compatible, but it’s still better than that six at a time Pal Park crap.
Like with most good news, there’s a catch. While pricing wasn’t discussed, there was a smidge of small print snuck into the video stating that an annual fee must be paid to access Bank. As if Pokemon didn’t make enough money, charging for storage is a new way for the series to make bank, (pun not intended… okay, I lied.) Satoru Iwata quickly explained that the fee is necessary to maintain the servers, since the benefit of the cloud would allow trainers to access their teams like never before. And just like that, I broke into a PTSD fit thinking of the Xbox One launch.
So we’ll take the good with the bad, mostly because we don’t have a choice. I’m thrilled with the ability to mass transfer, but I hate that we’ll have to pay to transfer. Oh well, ’tis the age of DLC, AKA “the future.” What do you think? Do you got Poke’s in the bank waiting to be deposited? Let us know below!