Backwards compatibility?

[Drago]

Someone told me a short while ago that X & Y were definitely going to have backwards compatibility, so we could ship all of our Pokemon from Black & White over to the new games. I've been looking around, however, and I haven't found any confirmation on this.

Anyone know the status? This could legitimately be a game-breaker for me, otherwise. I've been holding onto these suckers for a decade now (Ruby), and I don't want to start over again. I don't care how they do it, whether it's through a 3DS app, or even via the Wii U, just as long as they get it done.

What's your stance? Are you fazed whether or not it's included?

[Jeff]

Yeah, sort of. How it works is that you have to download a 3DS app called Pokemon Bank which lets you store Pokemon online, and get the Pokemon Transfer app to transfer Pokemon from the old games into Pokemon Bank, and they can be pulled over to X/Y from there. The weird thing is that there's an annual fee of $5 to use Pokemon Bank. 5 bucks a year is chump change, but what I find strange is that we need Pokemon Bank to do the transfer. I don't see why we can't have an app that transfers Pokemon to the SD card then to X/Y from there.

[Quicksilver62160]

Yeah, sort of. How it works is that you have to download a 3DS app called Pokemon Bank which lets you store Pokemon online, and get the Pokemon Transfer app to transfer Pokemon from the old games into Pokemon Bank, and they can be pulled over to X/Y from there. The weird thing is that there's an annual fee of $5 to use Pokemon Bank. 5 bucks a year is chump change, but what I find strange is that we need Pokemon Bank to do the transfer. I don't see why we can't have an app that transfers Pokemon to the SD card then to X/Y from there.

See, you're not thinking fiscally enough. Freemium games are all the rage! $5 X 1 Million kids = $5 Million.

[DarkestLight]

See why I'm mad now? Why I gotta pay to transfer :/. Unless It's the last transfer system we ever need and they just update it

[Fett One]

I'm a bit surprised that Nintendo is charging $5 for this. The target audience for these games are kids. If this works the way I think it does, your going to need a credit card, which kids don't have. Most parents aren't going to let their kids use their credit cards for this, since they more than likely won't understand what is going on. In order for this fee to work, it is entirely dependent on the adult fans and I for one am not paying it. I have never been able to get all the pokemon because I never had anyone to trade with, so going yet another version of the game without catching them all is no big deal to me.

[Lady Vulpix]

My Pokemon are staying in their respective games. I'm not going to pay to transfer them.

[Fett One]

My Pokemon are staying in their respective games. I'm not going to pay to transfer them.

That makes two of us. I have never succeeded in catching them all, so another generation of not catching them all isn't a big deal to me.

[CaptainJigglypuff]

I also will be keeping my Polemon (although disappointed) on their respective games. I do not have anything that can use the app and $5 a year just is so weird to me. I mean I caught most of my Pokemon (not counting event or traded Pokemon) and I do not see why I need to pay to store and use them. I mean I caught them in the previous games for free and do not have to pay to use the Pokemon Center's computer.

[Master Rudy]

Well despite the fee I for one will be using the hell out of this. It's just going to be a ton of work getting Pokémon over to X since I'll need to pick up Black or White apparently, transfer from Ruby/Leaf and then trade from Plat/SS to B/W......

As for the fee it's so low that it's laughable. Honestly it's strange to me that so many seem to be against $5 a year. Something tells me that if Nintendo is looking to charge then this could very well be the final solution in regards keeping future games compatible with older ones. There's also the fact that there's a fallacy that servers for storage and data transfer cost next to nothing. It's quite the opposite and it isn't exactly cheap. I've actually lost track of the number of folks that seem to think Blizzard is making $115 million dollars a year of pure profit based on 7.7 million current WoW subs times $15 a month. Nintendo could EASILY charge MORE and STILL make money off this. Anyone thinking $5 per year is a bit much strikes me as someone that's never touched an MMO before. All the good ones are $15 per month. Anything that is "F2P" is a joke since you tend to get locked out of features that you either have to buy or get a "premium subscription" for (not to mention the "pay to win" mindset since it's damn near impossible to compete with a free account against a paid one)

$5 is nothing and frankly the "What about kids?" argument also seems odd to me since I think Nintendo knows many of the biggest fans of this series have been with it for damn near 20 years (holy crap we're old....). There's also the fact that nowadays it's less odd to be in your mid to late 20's and saying that you play these games. Seriously look at the fact that some stores did a midnight release for X/Y. I highly doubt Gamestop was expecting a bunch of young kids showing up. For that matter go to a college now that X/Y are out. Let me know how many spot passes you get and how many Mii's you see that list X/Y as their favorite title. I remember just starting high school when Red/Blue hit Stateside. It was an odd age at the time since it was right at that line where admitting you played Pokémon was pretty much a recipe for getting mocked for the next four years of your life. On the flipside those that are entering college and playing these games are those that would have been 5 or 6 years old when Gold/Silver came out.

In short I don't expect too many kids to be using the Bank features. However there's a pretty good number of folks who are more than interested in paying that $5 per year fee so that they can keep using the Pokémon they've been using since Gen 3. The 3DS/2DS sold about 452K units last month. I have no doubt that a good number of those sales were solely for X/Y since Pokémon at this point can easily be labeled as a system seller.

Finally there's this:
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/71449/pokemon-xy/

Almost at the seven million mark (6.78M as of 11/9/13). If even a quarter of those sales are the 18+ crowd then that's still 1.7 million people. Since those will likely be the folks interested in the Bank then that's potentially 8.5 million a year in US dollars. Granted as stated above that's not going to be pure profit but I'd have to imagine that after costs it's still going to be a pretty decent one.