Pokémon Bank is a widely used and very popular service that allows users to “deposit,” store, and manage their Pokémon to bring them from game to game. Pokémon Bank provided a way for users to take some of the progress they had made forward into newer editions of the game.
With this service, players never had to worry about losing a rare or especially powerful Pokémon and were able to bring their favorite pocket monsters with them to explore new regions. However, new changes regarding online services for the 3DS may threaten the application’s usability.
Pokémon Bank Is Shutting Down – And Players Aren’t Happy
This week, Nintendo announced via the official Pokémon X (formerly known as Twitter) account that all Nintendo 3DS online services will be discontinued in April of 2024. This includes Pokémon Bank and Pokémon Transporter. Back in March, Nintendo announced the closure of the Nintendo eShop on 3DS systems, but this latest move serves as a further push to get users away from Pokémon Bank and over to Pokémon Home.
While there were fears that Pokémon Bank may disappear with little notice, those fears have been confirmed to be unfounded. As part of their official announcement, Nintendo assured users that Pokémon Bank would remain usable after the April 2024 shutdown of online services. However, it is still unclear how long it will remain available.
Users are strongly encouraged to transfer their Pokémon to Pokémon Home, a cloud-based service that is compatible with the Nintendo Switch as well as both Android and iOS operating systems. Pokémon Home has a free version, but users will need to sign up for the paid subscription system if they want to transfer their Pokémon over from Pokémon Bank. Distraught Nintendo DS players had this to say when they learned that services on the 3DS would be discontinued:
Wish you could just update Bank to be a local service. Once Bank goes offline transferring from any gen before Sword and Shield is going to be impossible. Wasn’t the whole point of this being able to save your Pokémon practically forever?
— Joshie (@JoshiwahP) October 4, 2023
Why are you encouraging it if you are not gonna close down Bank? 🤔
— tjmoonstudios (@tjmoonstudios) October 4, 2023
Why not just give the date of when it’s closing so people actually know when instead of having to worry about it?
Finally had transferability from Gen 1 all the way to Gen 9 and now its being taken away again
Officially, this important service isn’t going away any time soon. However, without updates or a way for new users to download the program, Pokémon Bank can’t go on forever.
