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Pokemon Home will let you bring old buddies to Sword and Shield

You can trade and manage your Pokemon collections from multiple games.

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor
Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.
Expertise News, mobile, broadband, 5G, home tech, streaming services, entertainment, AI, policy, business, politics Credentials
  • I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
Corinne Reichert
2 min read
Pokemon Home

Pokemon Home launches in February.

The Pokemon Company/Nintendo

The Pokemon Company and Nintendo have announced cloud gaming service Pokemon Home. The app will allow you to manage and trade all your Pokemon from mobile and Nintendo Switch games, including Pokemon Sword and Shield, Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Pokemon: Let's Go, Eevee. You can also use Pokemon Home to access the Nintendo 3DS software Pokemon Bank if you pay to be a premium user.

Pokemon Home launches in February on iOS, Android and the Nintendo Switch, with support for the AR mobile game Pokemon Go being added later.

"Pokemon Home will enable Trainers to bring over Pokemon from linked Pokemon series games and deposit them in Pokemon Boxes in the cloud or move them around to linked compatible games," the company said Tuesday. 

You can move Pokemon collections freely between the Pikachu and Eevee games, and between Sword and Shield. Once you move a character from Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu/Eevee to Pokemon Sword and Shield, however, you won't be able to move it back.

Pokemon Home will also let you trade Pokemon from those games using a mobile device, including through the Wonder Box, Global Trade System (GTS), Room Trade and Friend Trade.

The Premium Pokemon Home plan costs $2.99 a month, $4.99 for three months or $15.99 for a year. With Premium, you'll be able to move Pokemon from the Bank, host room trades and judge. With the free version, you can deposit 30 Pokemon versus 6,000 with premium; place three Pokemon in the Wonder Box at once, versus 10 with premium; place one Pokemon in the GTS versus three with premium; and only participate in, not host, room trades.

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