AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Nope.

Maybe I'm just being a massive pessimist, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't get released. That just seems to happen whenever companies say "until further notice" regarding a release date for anything.

Wait, if it's not released yet, how did Hitman get a Treecko?

Players in Japan (and a few other places in Asia iirc) had access to it for a brief period before Nintendo took it down.

yea i got one randomly through wonder trade. ive gotten a couple like that and ive been breedin em to spread em around

you can try and check the GTS to see if the pokemon you want actually got leaked out through the jap pokebank. i know a decent assortment of rayquazas got in the system but nothing like mew

if you guys want one hit em up on steam and/or when im on the 3DS, my guys name is Oscar

So is there any word on when pokebank will be released for real, and not just for a limited time in Japan? Are they building up server power so it doesn't crash? Are they just taunting me, knowing how badly I want to send BLAZE over?

no one has any idea lol

I think that they totally didn't expect the massive amount of people that wanted Pokemon Bank, and the servers crashed

that's what I heard

Well that and also they released the Pokebank right on top of Christmas, which would be when thousands of people got new 3DS and WiiU systems, which is a sudden surge of people trying to get online in addition to the existing users, thus resulting in the clusterfuck that knocked out Nintendo's online for several days.

I don't know why that means they just can't release it now
The eShop seems to be up and running all fine now

- Pokemon Bank goes online
- Massive amount of increase in network activity because everyone starts using it simultaneously
- servers crash

Welp
I never thought of that

A staggered release seems the way to go if they not certain about the hardware being able to handle the load all at once.

If you mean staggered localised releases, that wouldn't help much since hopefully they'd have localised servers already. Any other staggered release would be unfair. And still, it might be that they underestimated the network traffic by so much that the servers can't even handle regular load.

Considering they have sales data I would hope they didn't underestimate the needed power that badly. As for it being unfair for staggered global releases, I don't really see how. It's not like Pokebank is some kind of competition where a few days matter.

The difference is that unlike other releases, the server strain doesn't just go away.

Downloading a game off the eShop might strain the server if a bunch of people did it at once, but as soon as someone is done downloading, for the most part, they aren't accessing the server anymore, freeing up what they were using to download for someone else and relieving the pressure.

The problem with Bank is that all of its services are cloud-based, meaning putting Pokemon from X and Y into bank needs server space to store the data, and if you're using transfer, the Pokemon you're pulling out of the Gen 5 games have to be uploaded from a 3DS game, converted in some way to be compatible with the Gen 6 games, and then dumped into the cloud storage.

Effectively, once someone downloads bank, they aren't using the server space for the download, but they ARE using it for bank, since most people downloading it, especially at launch intend to use it ASAP.

Currently, the programs still work for people who managed to download it before it was removed from the eShop, and it came back online with the eShop, meaning the servers are likely tied together (which is pretty stupid but oh well). I'm sure they'll be shoring up the servers, and probably watching how the activity level and interest level of the people with bank fluctuate to try to get an idea of how big Bank is going to be. Compounding the matter, they probably don't want to overdo it in how many servers they purchase if all of the activity is going to dry up as soon as the free trial ends, since then there won't be returns to help pay off the servers they bought for all of the activity.

I think we might see bank released around the end of the month. Nintendo keeps mentioning that they'll release details as soon as they can, so they aren't just dropping the matter and trying to ignore it ever happened like the vitality sensor. Here's hoping they'll find a solution soon. It might even come down to a time/pokemon limit placed to prevent people from being on it all day and clogging the servers, kinda like dream world.