If Pokemon Home isn’t compatible with Pokemon Scarlet/Violet out the gate, what is even the point of it?

Ever since Generation 3 of Pokemon, the concept to carry your beloved Pokemon from one game to the next exists and I, for one, always did that. Sure, I have my Jirachi that the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl games unceremoniously handed to me. But I also have the Jirachi that I got from preordering Pokemon Colosseum in 2003 and using the bonus disc in my Gamecube to then transfer Wishmaker Jirachi to my Game Boy Advance.

I have a Porygon Z that’s been with me since you could first evolve it into one in Generation IV. And one of my favorite things to do in a Pokemon game upon beating it was to then pick six Pokemon I’d want to start a game with and then hatch LVL 1 shinies of those six with the hopes of transferring them into the next game.

Does this break the game a little bit? A LITTLE bit but honestly not that much. But the important thing to remember is that it’s MY game. I’m going through a story mode that doesn’t affect the online space and I should be able to go about as I wish.

With all that in mind, why is Pokemon Home doing this nonsense in which it doesn’t become compatible with a game until MONTHS after everyone has completely beaten the game? It sucks.

Pokemon Legends Arceus finally introduced Pokemon Home compatibility so late. Though the transfer of a Pokemon from Home to Legends Arceus creates a new type of Pokeball known as the Strange Ball, a special glowy green ball that’s supposed to help with the lore of sending Pokemon from “the future” into the past.

But despite this cool-looking new Pokeball, it never really inspired me to pop the game back in. By the time Pokemon Home started working with Pokemon Legends Arceus I had since COMPLETELY scrapped out all available content in the game. If you don’t believe me, check out all the guides I made for the game here.

So what is the point of Pokemon Home? At one point Nintendo decided that we were going to start paying yearly for a service, but then also decided WHEN we can access this service. That’s not cool. It ends up with me having this conundrum in which I have to decide to play the game the way I want to by waiting MONTHS after the game releases and having the game spoiled to me (not to mention the fact that my editor would murder me if I waited months to generate guides for the game), or I can go about it without transferring my old Pokemon and have to ignore things like the fact that my Meloetta, which used to be one of my mains, has been sitting inaccessible in Pokemon Home (and Bank) since 2015.

So this brings up an honest question; Why do we even have Pokemon Home at this point? What purpose does it hold if it’s literally quicker to just quicker for even the most casual of gamer to go through the game and literally find every damn Pokemon than it is to wait until the far-off future where you can take time out from piloting your flying car to stop and transfer something over from Pokemon Home. For real. What’s the point?