Nintendo announces discontinuation of Club Nintendo – New program to replace
Nintendo has just announced that Club Nintendo is set to be discontinued worldwide and replaced with a new program launching later this year.
The new program hasn’t been named yet but Nintendo say that users who sign up during the launch period will get a free copy of Flipnote Studio 3D for the Nintendo 3DS.
This new program will completely replace Club Nintendo and the Club will be phased over a period of time. From April 1st there will be no more point cards included with games and therefore games cannot be registered in the club. From the 20th of April digital games will not longer appear in Club Nintendo either nor will surveys for download software be available.
On September 30th 2015 the stars/coins in your accounts will expire and that is the effective end date of the Club Nintendo. Nintendo says you should spend your stars before this date, but there will be more things added to the stars catalog before the cut off date.
Club Nintendo launched in Australia in 2008 but has been running in other regions (and under various other names) for years before that.
A full FAQ can be found on Nintendo’s website should you have any more questions.
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- April 1st 2015: From this date, Nintendo will no longer include product registration cards with its packaged games, so such products cannot be registered in Club Nintendo. You may still find product registration cards in games that were in stock before this date, however.
- April 20th 2015: Termination of the registration of digital products downloaded from Nintendo eShop. Digital products obtained from Nintendo eShop after this date will no longer appear in the My Registered Games & Systems page in Club Nintendo. In addition, surveys for download software titles will no longer be available.
- September 30th 2015: End of Club Nintendo programme. All Club Nintendo features, such as signing up as a new member, logging in as a registered member, earning Stars, and exchanging Stars for items from the Stars Catalogue will no longer be possible from this date.
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Do I spend my points now before everything sells out or should I wait just in case Nintendo surprises us later in the year?
They have said they will add more things later. I’d wait.
Apparently it’s being discontinued worldwide, not just for Europe/Australia.
It’s a shame, but considering their financial situation the last couple of years I am not surprised the free gifts got pulled.
Ugh. This sucks.
I stopped registering my games immediately after purchasing them when they introduced an expiration date on points.
Instead I opted to enter them only when things I wanted were made available. But having to fill out a questionaire each, and every single time before your points can be claimed made the entire process a chore.
On one hand, I’ve got about a hundred unregistered Club Nintendo codes which I’m entitled to claim points on. On the other hand, I’ve got about a hundred unclaimed Club Nintendo codes which I have little motivation to register because the process has been made so difficult.
Yet somehow I’m still left feeling screwed over by this development. For what is essentially a loyalty reward program it’s really a rather arduous process.
Well there’s still until September for us, during which new items are likely to come out which may or may not pique your interest. If there’s nothing, just give the codes away or redeem the stars for items and then give away those items.
Easy come, easy go.
Club Nintendo was pretty crap in Australia anyway: I got some cool things for ‘free’ which was nice (‘free’ in that I spent hideous amounts of coin to rack up enough stars for anything decent).
Doing the questionnaire was fun: I ways made stuff up mostly, and my responses to “why did you buy this game” were enjoyable to think up: “hello, McFly…it’s a Super Mario game: why do you think I bought it!?” Or “Does anyone read these responses?”
Anyways, RIP Club Nintendo.
Question so for the new program i shouldn’t buy any games til October because it says from April no more club nintendo codes
Id be happy to take a couple of those codes of your hands for you. See, I need 400 points for the Yoshi Backpack. So if you did decide not to use them i would be really grateful. But of course no hard feelings is not.
(reply here if you want and then I shall give you some contact deets)
The Yoshi Backpack is awesome, hope you get it.
I also hope the club’s replacement is just as good… but I’m sure just like other things that get replaced, it’ll be far worse and less benaficial to us.