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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Facts of Club Nintendo Closing

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - If you're gonna be sad, be sad for the right reasons.

As you have no doubt heard (well, maybe I have a little doubt), Nintendo's relatively long-running loyalty/rewards program, Club Nintendo, is ending July 1, 2015. Key facts:
  • Newly (as in, as of yesterday) released games don't have Club Nintendo codes anymore.
  • You have until March 31 to register all your codes. Accounts cannot be created after this date.
  • You must redeem all your Club Nintendo coins by July 1, 2:59 AM EST. 
  • All Club Nintendo codes must be redeemed by July 31, 2015.
We would like to remind you, if these dates sound familiar, that they are shared with the Digital Deluxe Promotion timeline. For that, you have until March 31 to receive your codes, and June 30 (otherwise known as July 1, 2:59 AM EST) to redeem the codes. This means there is a whole month between redeeming Club Nintendo codes and Digital Deluxe Promotion codes, apparently!

Important Information on Club Nintendo Program Discontinuation
Important information greets you.
Also, the rewards page states, "Dozens of downloadable games and a limited quantity of exclusive reward items will be added to the rewards catalog in February." In other words, don't redeem all your coins just yet.

Also, we're getting Flipnote Studio 3D. ALL Club Nintendo members! ...Apparently for free. If you don't have a Club Nintendo account yet (why wouldn't you?) but want Flipnote Studio 3D, you can still get it!
"As a small token of appreciation for your loyalty, all Club Nintendo members will receive a download code for Flipnote Studio 3D in February, 2015. Flipnote Studio 3D will be available to Club Nintendo members until June 30, 2015. The ability to create a new Club Nintendo account will end on March 31, 2015."
Some analysis: Club Nintendo has been gradually scaling back its rewards for years now, which has not only been a thing in America, but in other regions around the world, as well. To date, the best reward was still Doc Louis's Punch-Out!! in the loyalty program's first year, and I was happy to be able to play that as a big Punch-Out!! fan.



Before Club Nintendo we just had the MyNintendo accounts that our Nintendo NSider Forum accounts were based off of. The username/password for MyNintendo carried over to Club Nintendo after NSider closed. MyNintendo also had registration of games/systems, except it wasn't really a rewards program. However, registering three games WAS how you could get The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition.  (It's also how I've played The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Adventure of Link, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.)

Three GameCube games would be like 150 Club Nintendo coins today. You can't get anything anywhere near this value for that now.
Other than that, Club Nintendo was never really a selling point that we could point to and say, "This is why you should be a Nintendo fan." It was always just sort of... there. When it got to the point early on that they mainly just offered download codes for games you probably already have, then it pretty much wasn't worth it. I have let a TON of coin-redeeming opportunities let me by, apparently. All those expired surveys... yikes. Sure, there's the Mewtwo code for Super Smash Bros. 4 along with the CD soundtracks, but that's more a last hurrah. All those "we are forcing you to use your coins or else they'll expire" things resulted in me getting stuff no one wants that I tried to get rid of.

Just to take inventory: I'm sitting on two Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate demo codes (that I just got today, actually), a The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD code, an F-Zero X code for the Wii, and two Digital Deluxe Promotion codes (each worth $5 in eShop credit). I gotta get rid of those before June 30.

...Look forward to a KoopaTV giveaway contest between now and E3 2015!

By the way, some people think Club Nintendo being discontinued is a sign of Nintendo's financial health, or something.

That's ridiculous.

If anything, with amiibo, the lifetime money value for the average Nintendo customer has only increased. That means a rewards program should actually be improved. After all, Nintendo said they're working on a new program, so we'll see how that goes.

Bright side: You don't have to destroy your game box covers anymore trying to get the codes after they stopped including them in a packet behind the instruction manual. Poor Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney now has a rip in it!


Ludwig has had a MyNintendo account since 2003 and has gotten all sorts of free stuff for the thousands he must have spent on Nintendo products. He hasn't calculated how much money he has given Nintendo in his lifetime and would probably be scared of the total, so he never will.


For more on how Ludwig is a Punch-Out!! fan, see the Punch-Out!! week series of articles.
Club Nintendo's giant reward catalog for 2015 is revealed! Thoughts inside.
Even though Club Nintendo discontinued, the site is still accessible. The same isn't true for the Deluxe Digital Promotion!
Nintendo's new rewards program is "My Nintendo", different than "MyNintendo" here.

18 comments :

  1. *cries quietly* So many games I still planned to register to get Platinum status in future years... XD

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, takin' advantage of that (formerly) 5-year registration period...
      ...Now you gotta dump it all now.

      Delete
  2. I think I actually threw away a few codes... :P
    It would be pretty cool if they had amiibo as prizes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yup!
      looks like flipnotes gonna be the next pokemon bank though. Now that they're emailing codes, the eshop is going to crash when they're released.

      Delete
    2. They're e-mailling them? I thought they'd be sent via the to-do list.

      Delete
    3. oh,my bad. misheard the update. That delay really sucks. It's going to crash again then as well.

      Delete
    4. ...probably, unless no one knows about it being there.

      ...Eh all of the mainstream sites will mention it. >_>

      Delete
    5. That's probably true. I'm a bit frustrated they keep delaying it.

      Delete
    6. To be fair, it went from "sometime in February" to "this week in February" to "sometime in February".

      Delete
    7. I suppose that's true. Still, they should pick a time and commit to it. It's understandable to do it once,but it feels like this lack of preparation has happened a lot lately.

      Delete
    8. Reminder that Nintendo's was the only online console network to survive Christmas.
      http://koopatv.blogspot.com/2014/12/on-christmas-only-nintendo-network.html
      I'd say that cancels out these recent mishaps.

      Delete
    9. I suppose so. I wonder if they could release a few download codes at a time to prevent crashing.

      Delete
    10. It doesn't matter if the codes are released or not: If people THINK they are, they'll head over to CN and crash it.

      Delete
    11. oh,right. I just don't see why this chaos could have happened two years ago. no matter how long they delay it,it'll happen. Obviously,their best bet is some obscure time,but still...

      Delete
    12. They should just take the crash and keep saying "YOU GOT UNTIL JUNE 30!"

      Delete
    13. The sad thing is that I was debating what to get for so long,I never spent my leftover points.

      Delete

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