One unlucky player’s Nintendo Switch 2 experience will make you cautious about transferring save data to the new console.
Transferring all your data from the Nintendo Switch to your shiny new Nintendo Switch 2 console should be a simple process. Not only can it sometimes not work though, but Nintendo’s confusing messaging led some to think it could only be done during the initial set-up process.
That’s not the case and you can easily move save data from one console to the other any time you want, either wirelessly or through the Nintendo Switch Online exclusive cloud service.
Unfortunately, it’s not a risk free process, as there are reports of Switch 2 owners losing whole save files while trying to transfer them. One particularly devastated owner admits to losing their Pokémon Scarlet save this way, and in the process losing 20 years’ worth of progress.
If you’re wondering how that’s possible, that’s because they had been holding onto all the pokémon they owned from previous games, going as far back as the Game Boy Advance, and had transferred them into Pokémon Scarlet.
In a now deleted Reddit post (per IGN), ThatOtaku26 admitted they were ‘about to cry’ after realising the last 20 years of pokémon they collected had just vanished into the ether.
‘I just got a Switch 2, did the startup and initial data transfer with no issues. My Scarlet save file is gone. It loads straight into the language selection and create a character screens. No data on my OLED. Just all gone,’ they wrote.
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It’s not even clear what happened since they insist there was no error in the data transfer: ‘There’s nothing I can do. I don’t even know if I wanna play anymore.’
Other fans soon chimed in with commiserations and stories of similar incidents that happened to them in the past. ‘The Pokémon save system is the s******** thing ever,’ replied daoester406.
‘My 6-year-old son and I lost all our save data for Scarlet, Sword, Arceus, and [Let’s Go, Pikachu]. We can always start again, but man is it such a pain in the butt.’
Some have suggested ThatOtaku26 contact Nintendo’s customer support to try and have their data recovered, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to help.
IGN’s own Rebekah Valentine suffered the same problem with her Pokémon Violet save file, saying customer support ‘just shrugged their shoulders’ when she spoke with them.
How to save your Pokémon between console transfers
Incidents like this are perhaps the best advertisement for the Pokémon Home cloud service, which lets you store any pokémon you’ve acquired and transfer them between compatible games.
It’s really the only option fans have, since none of the Pokémon games on Switch are compatible with Nintendo’s cloud save feature and thus can’t be backed up online.
While Nintendo’s never given a formal reason as for why this is the case, the common theory is this is to prevent players from cheating by duplicating certain pokémon.
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