Pokemon Home is Coming in February to Help You Build Up Your Galarian PokeDex

We don't know a lot about Pokemon Home, the cloud service that's supposed to let us freely transfer our Pokemon between games. And now that the latest Pokemon Direct is over—well, we still don't know a lot about Pokemon Home. Regardless, the Pokemon Direct gave us a release date for the service: February 20. The Direct also promised us more information is coming soon.

The news about Pokemon Home's release date was paired with another interesting tidbit: The two upcoming Pokemon Sword and Shield expansion packs, called Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra, will funnel more than 200 popular Pokemon back into the Galar Region. Fortunately, you don't have to buy the expansions to bring the previously exiled Pokemon back into Sword and Shield. You can trade for them in the vanilla game or upload them through the Pokemon Home service.

Today's 20-minute Pokemon Direct pulled back the curtain on the Pokemon series' immediate future. The Isle of Armor expansion is coming in June, and Crown Tundra arrives this fall. Both games feature all-new Pokemon, new areas to explore, a heavy emphasis on open landscapes that resemble Sword and Shield's Wild Area, and a slew of new (and returning) Pokemon. Look for new Galar region variants, too: Galarian Zapdos looks capable of slicing your guts into confetti.

The expansions are good news, but the real winners of the Pokemon Direct might be Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fans, who are getting a remake of the first game with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX. This will be the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game in something like 15 years, so congratulations for keeping the faith, enthusiasts.

We enjoyed Pokemon Sword and Shield despite the controversy surrounding the game's pared-down PokeDex. We'll continue to keep on top of the PokeNews as it comes in.