Details about Pokémon Home, Nintendo’s upcoming replacement to Pokémon Bank, have finally been revealed. The new service will release next month, giving Pokémon Trainers a new way to shuffle their Pokémon between games. Pokémon Home will be split into two tiers, a free tier and a premium tier.
The premium model has sadly dashed hopes that the price would match up with Pokémon Bank at $5 a year. The premium service will cost $3 a month, $4.99 for three months, or $15.99 for a full year. The free model is, perhaps, a little stilted, as Nintendo is looking to move people into the premium tier.
Features include the Wonder Box, which will allow Pokémon to be traded with people all around the world, even when you are not using Pokémon Home. The Global Trade station will enable you to set which Pokémon you wish to trade, and which Pokémon you want to receive, and will match you with Trainers who match up with those parameters. You will even be able to request Pokémon that you haven’t caught yourself. The premium tier will allow you to use these features more often and trade more Pokémon through them.
Room Trade will allow you to create a room and trade with people who join. The maximum capacity for the rooms will be twenty players, and once again is only a feature for premium customers.
On the free tier, you won’t be able to use the judge function, which means a degree of blind trading when it comes to Pokémon stats, and free users will not be able to send invites to trades, which means for each trade to happen, at least one of them will have to be on the premium tier. Finally, a feature called Friend Trade will allow you to trade Pokémon with nearby users who are on your Pokémon Home friends list.
Pokémon deposited in Boxes in Pokémon Home will be registered to the National Pokédex, and Pokémon that Mega Evolve or Gigantamax will have these forms registered also. The National Pokédex will allow you to see Pokédex entries from all the supported games in one place.
You can also receive Mystery Gifts in the mobile version of Pokémon Home. This feature will allow you to receive Mystery Gifts for Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield as well as gifts specifically for Pokémon Home. Pokémon received in Pokémon Home can be directly deposited in a Box in Pokémon Home, then traded or transferred as you wish.
At launch, Pokémon Home will support Pokémon Sword, Pokémon Shield, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!, and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! with support for Pokémon GO being added at a future date.
