Nintendo's next-gen console, the Nintendo Switch 2, hit shelves earlier this month, racking up an impressive 3.5 million unit sales in just four days – double the launch period sales of the original Switch. But as hordes of players migrate their data from the old Switch to the new console, a tragic wave of save data loss has emerged. The most brutal case? One player reportedly lost over 1,000 hours of gameplay progress and a Pokémon collection spanning two decades.
According to a Reddit post, user ThatOtaku26 transferred data from their Switch OLED to the Switch 2. Upon launching "Pokémon Scarlet," they were greeted with the language selection and new character creation screen, effectively forcing them to start from scratch.
The player stressed that they followed all steps correctly, and no error messages appeared during the data transfer. However, when attempting to save in "Pokémon Scarlet," a message popped up stating that "data on both the OLED and Switch 2 consoles had vanished," and it couldn't be restored.
It wasn't just "Pokémon Scarlet" progress that was lost. Even Pokémon brought over from "Pokémon LeafGreen" on the Game Boy Advance and "Pokémon Diamond" on the Nintendo DS were completely wiped out. For players who value legacy and cherish their generational legendaries, this felt like "two decades of effort instantly reset to zero."
Other players have reported similar experiences. Another user stated that not only their "Pokémon" titles, but also save data for "The Legend of Zelda," "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe," and several other games on their entire Switch OLED console might have been simultaneously deleted, especially since some games don't support Nintendo Switch Online cloud saves.
Given this, and with "Pokémon" series games not being covered by Nintendo's cloud backup service, players' data can only be backed up and transferred via the official "Pokémon Home" platform.
via： IGN