According to the official Pokemon website Pokemon Global Link will be shutting down in late October in order to prepare for the launch of Pokemon Sun and Moon. Some features will be discontinued which includes game sync meaning you won't be able to transfer items to your game. You will also no longer be able to participate Random Matchup Rating Battles. You will still be able to use certain features with X/Y/OR/AS such as Wonder Trading, Random Matchup Free Battles and the GTS.
 
To compensate there is a "thanks campaign" meaning that there's a sale on items bought with Poke Miles starting with this announcement up until the service is taken offline. Several items like heart scales, PP UPs and Rare Candies will be 50% off. The same will apply to the various "attractions" aka minigames. On top of this you will now also be able to buy Ability Capsules.

New features will be added once the service is brought back. Some of these include trainers being able to host their own competitions, where they can customize their own rules and who is allowed to participate. The other notable feature is Hyper Training which will allow you to level up your Pokemon's stats once they've reached level 100. This can be done with the help of an item obtainable from the legendary Pokemon Magearna.

This and several new Pokemon being added are previewed in a new trailer that was recently released. Which can be seen here

For once I actually have a favor to ask of you all reading this. I would like some feedback on whether you'd like me to make Pokemon News a regular segment. That means possibly making an article each month where I talk about Pokemon News where I sort of summarize everything that's been going on and maybe give some general thoughts. Something you'd like to see, or would you rather I focus on other gaming news? Tell me in this thread!

Well, I personally don't care for Pokémon News in the slightest, but I can almost guarantee other users would really appreciate the articles being written. I can't speak for any one else for sure, but considering the fact we have an entire Forum dedicated solely to Pokémon as a franchise, I can only imagine the demand would be there. I can't really ask her at the moment, but I'm pretty sure my girl (who uses the site) would like to read it, seeing how invested in the franchise she is. She's actually the reason I'm burnt out on Pokémon altogether, since we would play nothing but the hacks on here together for days on end (and that's how we met, funny as it is). 

Again, I can't speak for others, but I'd imagine quite a few users would enjoy someone else doing all the foot work and summing up all the big news of the Pokémon franchise here so they don't have to go anywhere else to get the latest scoop

I haven't played the core Pokemon games in a long time. That said, we do play Pokemon GO. If you have any news relating to that, I'd be down to hear it.

Well this is certainly some big news. Personally, I really liked the old Global Link, and I thought that it was actually very clever and fun way to incorporate the Nintendo 3DS's wireless compatibility. I feel like they could honestly just stick with the old one, because I, personally, have never had any problems with it, On the other hand, all of these new features sound pretty frikkin' awesome.

Being able to host your own competitions sounds generally pretty cool. I can't be sure whether that means hosting tournaments or what, but it doesn't matter, I'm sure that will end up being a  really cool feature. Hyper Training, on the other hand, while it sounds like an absolutely epic idea, I don't think that it's entirely necessary. I mean, in the end what does it amount to beyond another way to make the non player character trainers even less significant than they actually are and making it even more difficult for strategists to beat out brute force players. (I myself am a send in the sweepers kind of guy though, so I don't really mind lol)

On the other hand, the removal of the global trading system and random match up based rating battles and Wonder Trading in the new games kind of rubs me the wrong way. I thought those were some pretty awesome features, and it will kind of suck to see them gone.

Titan127 : Actually the GTS will still be functional like I said in the article. As for random rating battles while they will be discontinued for X/Y/OR/AS they will likely make a return for Pokemon Sun and Moon. Meaning as long as you're getting those games it shouldn't matter too much. I can't say I'm too excited about Hyper Training either since it sounds like it could potentially break the meta, but it's pretty big news regardless.

Zlinqx : Oh, whoops, read that wrong. Sorry, I thought it said that we 'will not' be able to use those features in the new games, which kind of weirded me out. I didn't understand why they would remove such successful features, but now I understand, since they didn't actually remove them at all.

Yeah, see I don't think I'm going to be getting those games just because of money issues and me being stingy. In all honesty, I probably will end up getting them, but at the moment I just really do not want to have to spend fifty or more dollars for another Pokemon game that may or may not surpass my enjoyment of the twenty dollar Pokemon Soul Silver version or that of Pokemon Platinum version, which I got for fifteen dollars. I just kind of like X and Y, really, too, and I didn't enjoy Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire that much either, surprisingly enough.