Pokemon Home gets new release date for Scarlet & Violet compatibility

The “will they/won’t they” between Pokemon Home and the games Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet is the kind of “will they/won’t they” normally reserved for shows like “The Office”.

If you’re unfamiliar with Pokemon Home, it’s a service where players can use the program to access the save files for the various Switch Pokemon games (and Pokemon GO) and transfer them from one to the other.

This is really great to help players fill out a Pokedex, or, in my case, transfer some Pokemon from one game to another that you’re proud of or have grown attached to, like my shiny Pokemon and my special event Pokemon like a Jirachi I received from a special preorder disc that came with a Gamecube game called Pokemon Colosseum way back in 2004.

It’s a fantastic program, provided it actually works. However, with Pokemon Sword and Shield, Game Freak started cutting back on what Pokemon appear in their games leading to some of your cherished Pokemon being stuck in the virtual jail that is Pokemon Home for years on end. For example, I have a rare Pokemon called Meloetta that was one of my main Pokemon to use. She hasn’t been able to be transferred to a Pokemon game since Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon in 2017. So she’s been sitting in a digital hell for more than half a decade at this point.

Back to the “will they/won’t they” bit. Pokemon Home’s compatibility with Scarlet and Violet, according to leaked data, looks like the vast majority of Pokemon currently unavailable will be available meaning a lot of Pokemon that haven’t been usable in years will finally be able to stretch their virtual legs. The Shiny Zygarde that can be seen as my constant companion in all my Pokemon Sword and Shield guides like this one here can finally join me again.

When Nintendo and Game Freak first talked Pokemon compatibility, they mentioned that we could expect it in the first quarter of 2023. Well…it’s almost June which, if my math is right, is the ass end of the second quarter. So that turned out to be false.

Then they stated that we could expect it May 24th, which was exciting until that same week when they announced that they “put the Mudbray before the cart” and it wasn’t going to be ready then. Which, if we’re talking like that, was almost the “straw that broke the Cameurpt’s back” for me.

Luckily, they’ve given us a new release date and it’s, thankfully, not as far off as I feared. Nintendo announced that on May 29th, 8PM Eastern time, Pokemon Home is going to go down for maintenance and when it comes back, you’ll finally be able to use it in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. So, essentially, it’ll be good to go on May 30th.

Honestly, I’m hyped. I’m mad that it took this long, but I’ll be real, while I played the hell out of Pokemon Scarlet creating guides and what not for you all, I kept Pokemon Violet off to the side, telling myself I wouldn’t play it until I finally was able to transfer a very specific team of shiny Pokemon over so I’ll finally have that chance.

Let’s just hope that in getting excited we haven’t…Jinxed…ourselves.