Pokémon players just want to know when Pokémon Bank is out

A big compatibility update for Pokémon storage app Pokémon Bank is due sometime this month, but Pokémon Sun and Moon players are pretty tired of waiting. With January nearing its end and not a peep from The Pokémon Company about when the Nintendo 3DS app’s big update is coming, many fans are making their anxiety and impatience publicly known.

The Pokémon Company first announced a January 2017 launch window for the Pokémon Bank update back in September, when it added a page about the application to the Sun and Moon website. When it becomes compatible with the latest pair of Pokémon 3DS games, the paid service will offer storage for up to 3,000 Pokémon and the ability to move monsters over from predecessors X, Y, Alpha Sapphire, Omega Ruby and the Virtual Console releases of Red, Blue and Yellow.

We haven’t reported on Pokémon Bank since the fall, however, because The Pokémon Company has been loath to discuss any further details about when players can start bringing their Pokémon over. (We reached out to them today and were told to “stay tuned” for more information, but nothing else.) Now that January is in full swing and many Sun and Moon players have made their way through most of the postgame, there’s only one thing on their minds: When is Pokémon Bank actually coming out?

Twitter users have been bombarding the official Pokémon account about the app throughout the month, to no avail.

A well-known member of the games’ datamining community added fuel to the fire by tweeting about the size of the upcoming Pokémon Bank compatibility update, which is expected to be much bigger than that for previous games.

Yet both he and Joe Merrick, webmaster for the influential fansite Serebii.net, have contributed to the discourse surrounding Pokémon Bank’s unknown whereabouts. Michael chimed in about the lack of Pokémon Bank news right around the app’s third anniversary, a bittersweet joke that fans appreciated.

Merrick, according to his tweets, regularly finds himself getting the brunt of fans’ requests for more info.

As Merrick often retweets out to his followers, however, we should expect Pokémon Bank sometime at the end of January.

Merrick told Polygon that the widespread confusion and desire for Pokémon Bank news is due to unclear messaging on The Pokémon Company’s part.

“It's a lack of clarity and consistency in the message from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company,” he said. “As the Western arm only really gave the wider January 2017 date as opposed to the Late January 2017 [sic] Japan gave, many were pinning their hopes on it being early in the month and so are getting a bit impatient.”

We still have a little more than a week to go, if Pokémon Bank is really out this month. Rest assured that the most hardcore fans are counting the days.