The Wait for Pokémon HOME on Scarlet and Violet Is a Disgrace

[Pasio]

I wish it had backwards compatibility with Bank, so that if you have Bank but no Gen 8 or 9 game, you can transfer the Pokemon from Home back to Gen 7

 

[RileyXY1]

Looks like the Home update for SV has been delayed.

 

[Norzan]

Hilarious. Honestly surprised that they haven't rushed it given that Gamefreak has kind of become the poster child for rushed releases.

Of course Tears of the Kingdom coming out mostly polished sure makes Scarlet and Violet release look even worse. It's like giving the product the dev time it needs actually matters.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I wish it had backwards compatibility with Bank, so that if you have Bank but no Gen 8 or 9 game, you can transfer the Pokemon from Home back to Gen 7

Was never going to happen, they want to eventually phase out Bank. Bank seems to be tied to the 3DS whereas Home is platform agnostic and can communicate with the Switch and mobile (and probably even future Nintendo consoles). They've already removed it from the eShop, at some point, possibly in the next year or two, they'll probably flat out shut it down completely.

Also, if you don't have a Gen 8 or later game, Home isn't going to be much use for you anyway. It's meant for storing and transferring Pokemon to those newer games. Unless you're waiting for a Pokemon game that's better than the Gen 8 games and SV at some point in the future (at which point who knows how long your Pokemon will be stuck there, it could be a LOOOOONG while before Game Freak makes the kind of game you want again depending on your preferences), there's really no point in worrying about transferring Pokemon to Home.

 

[Gengarzilla]

This disaster week for TPCI has made me very thankful that my life as a Pokémon fan doesn't revolve around the main series anymore. I can just shake my head with exasperation at the joint raid/HOME blunders before returning to my "until-HOME-update" binge of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, my real homebase in this wider franchise since the Gen 7 era and the reason I ever came to be a Pokémon fan in the first place.

 

[UxieLover1994]

So much for the mass Vivillon catch to unclog HOME, as GO's odds of survival are decreasing with each event. Whoever did that fake tweet needs to be fired for giving the fanbase false hope.

So, we're back where we started: it has been one year since HOME was updated for BDSP and PLA, six months since SV was released, and we've got 31 days left of Spring with no confirmation on whether the app will have the update on time or be officially delayed into Summer (or Fall... or 2024). The update for SV set for next week is only to fix the online battles for the upcoming World Championship... if that hasn't been postponed already after the recent raid blunder.

 

[Zone]

My hope is that the delays to Bank are Game Freak realising that SV needed a lot more work to be ready for sale, and that it's better to delay than have something else release that is just as buggy.

As to the announcement, I am assuming the PR team got told a date ages ago, scheduled the announcement. Behind the scenes the devs decided to delay, but the message didn't flow through to all the channels properly. A bit embarrassing for them, but not the end of the world.

 

[Battista]

The Pokémon Company: Yeah, actually the date we gave out was wrong…

Me:


You either laugh or you cry at this point

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

This is extremely frustrating honestly. First, wasn't Home connectivity for SwSh available in February 2020? That was about 3 months after SwSh came out. So why is it taking this long to simply add connectivity? I recall BDSP and PLA also took a long time. Secondly, they told us Spring 2023 but its almost Summer 2023. Its very possible they encountered some kind of bug and had to delay it, but it only makes things frustrating because despite how much I enjoyed SV, this game has been the buggiest launch in Pokemon history. The announcement and subsequent "Oh we made a mistake." Only served to further the frustration. A delay in most cases would be seen as a good thing in the long run, but people are just so frustrated with how poorly TPCi has been handling everything that its only led to more frustration

 

[Kallyle]

My hope is that the delays to Bank are Game Freak realising that SV needed a lot more work to be ready for sale, and that it's better to delay than have something else release that is just as buggy.

As to the announcement, I am assuming the PR team got told a date ages ago, scheduled the announcement. Behind the scenes the devs decided to delay, but the message didn't flow through to all the channels properly. A bit embarrassing for them, but not the end of the world.

This is extremely frustrating honestly. First, wasn't Home connectivity for SwSh available in February 2020? That was about 3 months after SwSh came out. So why is it taking this long to simply add connectivity? I recall BDSP and PLA also took a long time. Secondly, they told us Spring 2023 but its almost Summer 2023. Its very possible they encountered some kind of bug and had to delay it, but it only makes things frustrating because despite how much I enjoyed SV, this game has been the buggiest launch in Pokemon history. The announcement and subsequent "Oh we made a mistake." Only served to further the frustration. A delay in most cases would be seen as a good thing in the long run, but people are just so frustrated with how poorly TPCi has been handling everything that its only led to more frustration

At this point, I think the problem is that the newer games are being rushed out without compatibility in mind, and only now are Game Freak (and the Pokémon Company) starting to realize that they shouldn't have forced holiday releases.

 

[Pasio]

My hope is that the delays to Bank are Game Freak realising that SV needed a lot more work to be ready for sale, and that it's better to delay than have something else release that is just as buggy.

As to the announcement, I am assuming the PR team got told a date ages ago, scheduled the announcement. Behind the scenes the devs decided to delay, but the message didn't flow through to all the channels properly. A bit embarrassing for them, but not the end of the world.

At this point, I think the problem is that the newer games are being rushed out without compatibility in mind, and only now are Game Freak (and the Pokémon Company) starting to realize that they shouldn't have forced holiday releases.

Personally I think they realize, but just don't care. I think they will keep disregarding the Pokémon community until a boycott happens. They've already won with an embarrassing release many argue shouldn't have been legal. Scarlet and Violet became the fastest selling console exclusive video games in history! Pokémon is also already used to receiving massive community backlash (Gens 3, 5, 8, 9). Half those gens ended up getting loads of praise by the later generation of players who grew up on them. I have a hunch that they are probably not taking any of this very seriously with the mindset that people would go back and praise the Nintendo Switch games in the future anyway. At this point they are probably like, "nothing can ever fully satisfy the fans, but the old ones will come back for nostalgia!"

 

[Norzan]

Most of the fanbase have short term memory or genuinely don't care. And if they care, they stop when the next game is announced and they think that the release state is gonna be better because they think the devs have listened to criticism of the previous release.

We live in a world where people are willing to buy Diablo 4, a game being made by one of the worst AAA companies in gaming. A company that gave insincere apologies to major screw ups and showed no signs of changing, treats their employees like shit to the point they got sued for their toxic work enviroment, fires a bunch of them when the company makes record setting profits and just recently stopped the development of a mode that was the selling point of a sequel to one of their most popular games in recent memory. But as soon as they saw Diablo on the title, most people seemingly forgot all of that.

Not comparing Activision to Gamefreak obviously, but the main point stands. A lot of fans are willing to forgive a lot because they have an emotional attachement to the franchise.

 

[UxieLover1994]

There's a planned maintenance set for May 30 and a major update with the same staggered log-ins times that affected last year's update for BDSP/PLA. This could be it, guys, but I won't believe it until it actually happens. Although unlike last week's false news about the May 24 update, there was an actual tweet from the Japanese Pokémon Twitter account, and HOME itself has the news.

 

[SprigatitoBurrito]

its possible to mod your game to be connected but this may corrupt your game

 

[colours]

i'm personally concerned about any possible ramifications this would have for the next generation and beyond.

are we going to continue to have months-long home wait for future generations? i'd certainly hope not. Game Freak would have a decent amount of experience by the time gen x is a thing so i'm hoping they figure out optimal home infrastructure by then. s: i can understand patience for a few months after the games' release, but this long is certainly not ideal...

 

[Bolt Strike]

i'm personally concerned about any possible ramifications this would have for the next generation and beyond.

are we going to continue to have months-long home wait for future generations? i'd certainly hope not. Game Freak would have a decent amount of experience by the time gen x is a thing so i'm hoping they figure out optimal home infrastructure by then. s: i can understand patience for a few months after the games' release, but this long is certainly not ideal...

Unfortunately online infrastructure is one of Nintendo's weaknesses, and I don't think Game Freak and TPC are any better at this. Nintendo partnered with DeNA to help fix this, but so far it hasn't really moved the needle.

That being said, the issue might have more to do with bugs than struggling with infrastructure. Fixing SV's bugs, having to deal with compatibility between the different games (thanks to Dexit), and the ability now to transfer Pokemon backwards might have caused issues that delayed the release date compared to previous generations. SV and Home are simply much more complicated to deal with now than 8th gen.

 

[Norzan]

Funny that Dexit was supposed to alleviate workload by not having to model every pokemon in every new game, but all it does now is create compatibility issues between games that apparently take ages to be fixed.

And it's just gonna get worse with more and more pokemon being created, with several being exclusive to specific games. So Dexit really did nothing in terms of making things easier.

 

[Pasio]

Funny that Dexit was supposed to alleviate workload by not having to model every pokemon in every new game, but all it does now is create compability issues between games that apparently take ages to be fixed.

And it's just gonna get worse with more and more pokemon being created, with several being exclusive to specific games. So Dexit really did nothing in terms of making things easier.

I supported Dexit until it hit me that it did nothing at all except create an excuse for the developers to stop caring about their games or about the people buying them.

I  really cannot be convinced otherwise as literally EVERY aspect of the series Gamefreak promised they would use Dexit to improve either stayed the same or regressed from games before Dexit instead and I have collected overwhelming amounts of evidence for this personally.

 

[Norzan]

This is my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but they actually did it to make Pokemon Home far more enticing. Before you could just leave the pokemon in the cart, transfer them once to the new games and then be done with it. But now that every game doesn't have every pokemon in the code, they created Pokemon Home to be basically an hostage facility, making players store their pokemon there in the hopes that they might show up in future games, because before they would show up regardless due to GF coding every pokemon to be in a new game and thus you would feel no need to store them there.

The fact that Pokemon Home was created at the same time as Dexit happened makes me support this theory.

 

[Bolt Strike]

This is my tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but they actually did it to make Pokemon Home far more enticing. Before you could just leave the pokemon in the cart, transfer them once to the new games and then be done with it. But now that every game doesn't have every pokemon in the code, they created Pokemon Home to be basically an hostage facility, making players store their pokemon there in the hopes that they might show up in future games, because before they would show up regardless due to GF coding every pokemon to be in a new game and thus you would feel no need to store them there.

The fact that Pokemon Home was created at the same time as Dexit happened makes me support this theory.

I don't think that's the reason Home exists. Dexit certainly helps it, but Home is basically Bank with one major difference: it can communicate with other consoles. Bank only really worked with the 3DS, but Home can communicate with the Switch and mobile. I think Go is the main reason behind Home, so that you can bring your Pokemon from Go into the main games.