Highlights
- Fans of Pokemon Sleep are disappointed that they cannot transfer creatures to and from the game, but it makes sense since Sleep is a different title with a separate objective.
- In Pokemon Sleep , the focus is on helping a Snorlax get better sleep, not on battling other creatures. The critters in the game are not designed for fighting, so transferring them would require additional work.
- While some fans expected Pokemon Sleep to have connectivity with Pokemon Home like Pokemon GO , spin-off games typically do not have transfer features. Only Pokemon GO offers a connection to Pokemon Home .
There are tons of games that connect with Pokemon Home, the subscription service that lives up to its name as fans can store as many different Pokemon as they desire within its servers. On top of that, Home can connect to numerous different titles, including being able to freely transfer creatures back and forth between many of the more recent Switch games. Pokemon Sleep, however, is not one of them.
The fact that players can't transfer creatures to and from Pokemon Sleep has irritated a few fans, which may be founded in how players have been able to expect some sort of transfer and preservation of their pocket monster partners in several games for decades in a row. Even Pokemon GO has connectivity with Home, and now its cousin, Sleep, is left out of the complete package. However, it actually makes sense that Pokemon Sleep doesn't connect with home as it's a completely different title to the other titles with the subscription service.
Pokemon Sleep's Pokemon Are Helpers, Not Fighters
In Pokemon Sleep, the objective isn't to battle other critters against each other. Instead, players are enlisted to help a Snorlax get the best sleep it can to help Professor Neroli understand the greater scope of how pocket monsters doze, snooze, and slumber. While fans can collect a team of Pokemon to help accomplish this goal, their job is to gather berries and ingredients to help raise Snorlax's strength. This strength is for its Drowsy Power rather than battling.
As a result, the critters that help fans out every day aren't exactly made for fighting as it stands, and transferring them would likely require generating move sets and stats to these Pokemon, which may be extra work for Niantic and Select Button. While there are ways, such as adding specific special IDs to each creature that helps them gain the moves when transferred, it's not entirely worth it when Pokemon Sleep is meant to encourage habits over anything else.
Pokemon Spin Off Games Usually Don't Have Transfer Features
Some fans who weren't asking for Pokemon Home connectivity may be confused as to why such a feature was expected from Pokemon Sleep of all games as even though it has features that encourage players to check on it throughout the day, it's still just a sleep-tracking app. However, considering that Sleep has a rather close relationship with Pokemon GO, from being connected through features to Niantic taking a development role with both games, fans may have expected a tie-in to Pokemon Home from there.
From that perspective, it's somewhat understandable as to why the feature may have been expected, but it forgets why Sleep ended up being a stand-alone game where transferring Pokemon from it made no sense. As much as Pokemon GO changed the game in terms of what players could expect from Home considerably, it is only an exception and not the rule.
Niantic's AR mobile app is currently the only spin-off title that offers connection to Pokemon Home. The only spin-off games that offered transfer features to where players could take their catches with them was the Colosseum titles, and even then the creatures needed to be Purified to be sent to any other games. Other titles such as Pokemon Channel and Pokemon Ranger distributed Mythical Pokemon, but that was as far as it went.
As incredible as it is that players can transfer critters they catch during their day-to-day lives and put them in Pokemon Home, the same doesn't exactly need to be said for the creatures fans work with for their sleep research with Snorlax. It may upset a few completionists and Shiny Hunters that that their rare finds may be gone if the game ever shuts down, but there will be many more opportunities in other games down the line.
Pokemon Sleep is available now on Android and iOS devices.
