I'm new to gen 6 and I'm just wondering, do you absolutely need pokemon bank to transfer pokemon from previous gens (beyond X and Y)? I don't like the idea that this is a must. I know its a yearly thing but I bought this game thinking transfer would be as easy as it was for Black 2 and White 2 and all the gens before it. A little disappointed there's a charge, even if its yearly still sad about it.
i dont see it as a charge, servers cost a lot, and you have your pokes in the cloud, forever. i mean, even if gen 7 or 8 come they dont need to change it because its the best way to do it. just upload your pokes and download them wherever you want, i think even pokemon go will be able to upload pokemons to pokebank.
You do need it and it IS a shame that it costs money. But 5$ american isn't so bad. It comes to about .46ish a year which is pretty cheap compared to like.... any other online service. Although it's worth it to complain since before you only had to pay with your time in the form of the stupid mini games XD