Yesterday night Pokemon Home went up on the Switch without warning. As I've covered in the past, this new app serves as a replacement for the old Pokemon Bank, and allows you to store all of your Pokemon from nearly every game in the series on it. Of course older generation games like titles released on the GBA and DS can only transfer forward to the 3DS to make use of the Bank, and now the same can be said for going to Bank to Home. In other words, once you transfer Pokemon from Bank to Home, or convert your entire Bank to Pokemon Home, then there's no sending them back. Once your Pokemon are on Home however, you're free to interact with them however you like both in app, and in the Pokemon titles released for Switch. Of course this too has limits.
While Pokemon Home allows you to freely view, sort, trade, and read Pokedex entries of all Pokemon you own, which Pokemon games they can be sent to depends on where they come from. Pokemon from the Let's Go series can be traded freely between Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, but once they are brought into Sword or Shield they are converted into a Sword/Shield Pokemon. Sword/Shield Pokemon cannot be sent back to the Let's Go games, so they will forever remain in use only for Sword/Shield -- and any other Pokemon game that is to follow. This is how it has always worked, so it's nothing new for long time fans, but those who are new to the series will have to learn to be careful if they'd like to keep their games separated.
That being said, the app can now be downloaded on the Switch itself, mobile devices, and the Pokemon Bank app on the 3DS can now be updated to allow for trading to Home. This transfer system works by using your Nintendo account as a base, but if you'd like to trade Pokemon between Nintendo accounts from Pokemon Bank this can be done as well by using a password. As for those of you who would rather not even fool with the 3DS and trading Pokemon over, a simple "transfer all" option is available as well. This will send all Pokemon stored in Bank to Home automatically, and you don't even have to lift a finger. Of course this also means those Pokemon will never be able to return to the 3DS games, so think carefully before you decide to do this option.
And well, that about covers it! Now's your chance to upgrade to the new system, and finally get some of your favorite Pokemon back into Sword and Shield. Sadly not all Pokemon have been added to the Switch games at the time of me writing this article, but roughly 30 have been added back in with this new Home update. These new Pokemon include the Generation 1 starters, and even some of the legendaries from past gens. It's not a whole lot of additions overall, but it's a start.
