Pokemon Bank Launch Delayed December 26, 2013

Due to the issues we are currently having with the Nintendo eShop for the past two days, Nintendo has officially announced they are delaying the launch of the highly anticipated Pokémon Bank service until their network issues have been rectified.  Pokémon Bank was expected to launch on December 27th, 2013, tomorrow.  Since Nintendo’s eShop is not currently functional, anyone who would want to download it if it launched tomorrow would not be able to.

When launched, Pokémon Bank will allow users to transfer and store Pokémon obtained from the fifth and sixth generation Pokémon games to Nintendo’s cloud servers so they can be used in later games for a yearly fee.  You can read all the details about the service here.

No word was given when we can expect the Pokémon Bank to launch or when Nintendo Network will be back up to full capacity.  Nintendo has made it clear they are still working on the issue and hope to have the service back up and running as soon as they are able to.  We will keep you posted as this story develops.

Nintendo eShop is Down December 26, 2013

Since yesterday, I have been unable to log into the Nintendo eShop from either my 3DS or Wii U, and I have been reading reports coming in from all over the internet from tons of users who are having the same issue.  No, your brand new Nintendo Wii U and 3DS systems are not broken, the Nintendo eShop has been completely down since Christmas Day.

Normally having a digital marketplace down for a short period of time would not be much of an issue, except the way Nintendo has designed their consoles around this digital marketplace has made the issue all the more problematic.  Nintendo chose to bundle some of the games they are including with new hardware as digital download codes instead of physical copies.  Because the eShop is not functional, these downloadable game codes cannot be redeemed or downloaded until this issue is resolved, meaning many users may have nothing to play on their new systems for the time being.  Also some Nintendo 3DS games (like Mario Kart 7) have patched their retail versions (like the recent 1.2 patch for Pokémon X and Y), and these patches can only be obtained by downloading it through the eShop, they’re not installed automatically upon booting their games.  This wouldn’t normally be much of an issue, but some of these patches are required downloads for online play.  Anyone who hasn’t downloaded these patches before the eShop went down may not be able to access multiplayer in a game that would otherwise support it until the eShop comes back online.

Nintendo has released a statement that they are investigating the issue and for the time being they are pulling the Pokémon Bank app from the Japanese eShop.   I have also heard reports that Nintendo Network has been unable to allow new account creation for the time being, but I have not been able to confirm this independently.  Other Nintendo Network features such as Miiverse seem to be working fine on either supported platform for anyone able to log in.

We will keep you up to date on this story as it develops.

UPDATE (12/29/13):  After four days, Nintendo has reactivated the Nintendo eShop.