Pokemon Bank was released in 2014 and was not only meant to be a way for you to safely store your Pokemon on the cloud but also a way to always be able to transfer your Pokemon from each generation. Now that some time has passed since the original release let’s take a look at some of the problems with the Pokemon Bank storage system.
When Pokemon Bank released it was mired with connection problems which caused the service had to be delayed a few months and it got a lot of criticism for that, it really shouldn’t have happened but it did and I used to get errors from time to time in the beginning but they’ve pretty much gone and haven’t had them so that’s not really been a big issue with the service anymore. The slow speed to use the service as it connects however is a valid complain as it really does take its sweet time for you to actually login which should be something immediate.
The cost of the service is also a big problem among fans since they feel the service is too much for $5 a year and while somewhat true I still feel the price is fair; The way I can easily justify the price is easy as how many hours does it take for me to make $5 and how much time it took to transfer Pokemon from generation to generation, a small hint is that it took a long time. So if we get a new generation roughly every 4 years that means it’s a total of $20 for the service of Pokemon Bank, I’d rather pay $20 as it would take me far more time to transfer all my Pokemon every generation with their mini-games or having to catch them again or whatever gimmick they have than what it takes me to make $20.
The fact that I can save my Pokemon on the cloud is just another bonus than just paying to get my Pokemon transferred without a tedious process. But then now there are a lot of rumors that keep getting spread on message boards all the time that if you stop paying Nintendo will delete your Pokemon and I remember when this rumor started..It was a reddit post of one person who posted no real evidence and even deleted his account. I actually doubt the story I just don’t think his Pokemon were deleted for that specific reason, here we have another case of all the Pokemon disappearing but this time the pass didn’t expire so I guess it could just be bad luck, which of course shouldn’t happen but we don’t have much evidence one way or another to know what exactly happened and show fault it is. as we’ve seen reported many times of people leaving their pass expire for longer than a year without a problem.
I personally left it various months without paying to test it out only leaving Pokemon I didn’t care if I lost and never lost them and I was always able to transfer them back to my game without paying again, I just couldn’t upload new Pokemon. So people keep saying how you should be careful with Pokemon Bank but there’s no actual evidence that things will be deleted. Sadly the Pokemon Bank website hasn’t really been updated since it launched after Pokemon X & Y and if you go to the FAQ they have old answers and a vague response of “we will eventually delete them” but they give no actual date. Since then updates on Pokemon Bank have actually appeared on the ORAS and Sun/Moon websites but the actual Bank website never got any which is a shame. I still think Nintendo/Gamefreak would never actually delete your Pokemon and they only leave that vague answer to frighten you and encourage you to pay for the pass which brings us to the next problem..
Pokemon Bank doesn’t notify you when your pass is about to expire and counting you may have your Pokemon’s lives on the line that’s a big problem. They should send an email when your pass is about to expire so you are made aware as how else will you remember year after year that you need to pay for this service that you might not be using when the time comes to renew. Hell you don’t even get a notification on your 3DS that the pass is about to expire so not even through their notifications are you made aware. This wouldn’t be a problem if you could buy multiple years and not have to worry about it for a while but they don’t even let you do that as you can only buy a new pass if it’s 30 days from expiring..it’s almost as if they don’t want to make money and want you to forget.
We also have the issue that apparently Pokemon Bank isn’t the cloud service you might think it is and the actual account is linked to your 3DS and not your Nintendo Network ID. We all know it’s a known problem that Nintendo doesn’t have a real account system set in place but I think most of us thought Pokemon Bank would be a godsend if we ever had our portable stolen, we would at least not lose our Pokemon but we have someone who lost them all because he didn’t have his original system and the account is linked to it making one of its biggest appeal to be nearly worthless.
This only covers some of the common complaints and technical issues that the service has but there’s more to Pokemon Bank that needs to be discussed and that article should be out soon is here and third one in the future.
