Man, the news about the 3DS e-shop being shut down next year has put me in the mood to rant about Gamefreak's stupid ass decisions regarding storing Pokemon in the modern era. Collecting Pokemon and being able to keep them through the generations has always been the primary appeal of the games to me. When Gens 1 and 2 couldn't transfer I chalked that up to them not expecting Pokemon to get as consistently popular as it was (and also I was a child), but they fixed that with the remakes and later even the compatible 3DS versions. This always being a physical hardware solution was nice, while it becomes commercially unlivable it is practically guaranteed to remain possible for pretty much as long as it'll be relevant via 3rd party purchases.
However, as soon as the 3DS generation started using Pokemon Bank I was already worried. The fact the storage is cloud based just added a pointless and dangerous layer of complexity out of your hands. The obvious better solution would have been some kind of app like Pokemon Box or Pokemon Ranch you downloaded for your 3DS to allow storing Pokemon on the 3DS for transfers between Gen VI and Gen VII... but this was well into Gamefreak's shitty phase, so crappier service with an added cost for minuscule data amounts other companies offer 10,000x more of for free was right up their alley. I didn't like it, but it wasn't the worst way they could have done it.
Gen VIII comes out and now it's the worst way they could have done it. The fact they didn't even think about a physical solution annoys me... I'm sure there is a way one of the switch's ports could link something into either a 3DS or a 3DS cartridge... but I'm no engineer, and it would be a somewhat niche thing you'd have to physically produce regardless so whatever, we'll give it a pass. However, once again... the Switch has wifi and some local wireless connectability so it should have not been too hard to do a Pokemon box/ranch app solution and connect to the 3DS for all the reasons I stated about Pokemon Bank. Now it's even worse for a few reasons. The first reason is the insane price gouging - literally increasing the price from Pokemon Bank by 4x and also having the gall to still require Bank's price as well. This could be bypassed if it weren't for the second reason...
Dexit. I could go on and on about how much I hate the removal of being able to have all the Pokemon in a game, but needless to say because my favorite thing about the game is collecting Pokemon through the generations this is a huge blow to my enjoyment of the franchise. This causes a really big problem beyond that though... because the game cannot accommodate all the Pokemon the Switch's only option for moving them up is to pay for the crappy, overpriced Pokemon Home. Because all the prior games had all the Pokemon if you didn't want to pay for Pokemon Bank, you could just keep the Pokemon on the cartridge. Now that isn't an option... so if you want them in the current gen limbo you have to keep up your nonsensically expensive subscription. Even if that wasn't the case, data is now saved on the Switch instead of the cartridge which I consider way more likely to have long term issues than a cartridge.
Because of all this I opted not to transfer my Pokemon up and I didn't buy a Gen VIII game until I could at a discount. I figured now my collection would have to be separated, keeping the old stuff on the 3DS cartridges and the new gens would have to reside in their individual game's data, which is not something I like or feel should have ever been the case when it was done much better in the past. Even then, I knew eventually the 3DS would lose it's servers. Now that it is upcoming the way it's being handled is not encouraging. Pokemon Bank will stop requiring a fee, but will also not be able to be downloaded. The fact this is pure software is already something I alluded to hating as it's more ephemeral than hardware, but it goes further. Pokemon Bank will be supported for an 'unspecified amount of time' according to Gamefreak. What happens after that time? Is that simply the end of the road and decades of support for moving Pokemon up the generations just disappears into the wind, the games' most unique feature going with it?
On my Pokemon Ultra Sun cartridge right now is a shiny Mightyena. It was the first legit shiny I ever encountered. I caught it in 2003, very nearly 2 decades ago. I have been able to bring it into every new game until Gen VIII decided not only could I not use it in game, but I'd have to pay $25 to even bench it in modern limbo. With it are other Pokemon... traded from old friends I haven't seen since middle school, ex-girlfriends that bring back plenty of bittersweet memories among other stories. Maybe I am being far too sentimental over what is basically nothing, lines of code that only represent a fictional creature... but it is this kind of thing that used to made Pokemon a unique franchise. The idea that it could all be thrown away like nothing because the most profitable IP in history doesn't want to lift a finger to put in the smallest amount of effort to preserve it's unique identity is just so sad.
TL;DR
Game Freak is a horrible company. Someone should grief their base in Minecraft.
