Pokemon X and Y are wonderful. But what if you want to bring in Pokemon from previous generation of games? That's where Pokemon Bank and Poke Transporter come in. In short, the subscription service lets you store Pokemon in the cloud and transfer them from Pokemon Black & White to X & Y. It will be available on December 27th, Nintendo announced on Twitter.

The service will have an annual fee of $4.99. A FAQ explains that the fee will ensure "that everyone can store their Pokemon online and that the service will be compatible with future Pokemon games. The annual fee will support this maintenance." It will also make Nintendo money, but they forgot to point that out.

Some will ask: "why can't I just transfer my Pokemon directly?" Nintendo points out that the differences between the 3DS family of systems compared with the DS family make it "not possible yo communicate directly" between the two systems. However, there will be a free trial for fast-acting players that want to transfer Pokemon for free. "If you download and open Pokemon Bank by January 31, 2014, you will be able to obtain a pass that will allow you to use the software for no charge for 30 days," Nintendo promises.

Because Poke Transporter is not available separately from Pokemon Bank, the free trial will be best for fans that want to transfer from Pokemon Black & White into X & Y. The new generation of Pokemon launches on October 12.