[BLOG] Club Nintendo is being phased out for a planned new loyalty scheme

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CrimsonShade
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[BLOG] Club Nintendo is being phased out for a planned new loyalty scheme

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Say goodbye to Club Nintendo. Nintendo's long-standing loyalty program that allowed people to register their games and consoles, collect points (deemed Stars or Star Points in most territories, although America boringly used "Coins" instead), and spend them to claim exclusive merchandise, will be shut down this Summer after many years of service.


Nintendo have decided to phase out Club Nintendo to make way for a new, more modern loyalty scheme after reviewing its current business strategy; and after user feedback supposedly suggested many were dissatisfied with the current service - which makes sense, given that complaints were often made by users on the need to fill in a survey for EVERY game and console redeemed on the service to claim the stars and the annoyance this often caused. Part of the reason for the move may also be down to the belief that the service failed to catch on to a widespread audience in territories outside America, although this was not mentioned by Nintendo.


North Americans will have their service phased out first: Products released after January 20th will not contain registration cards; and from March 31st all Club Nintendo members will not be able to register any products or collect coins at all, nor will any new members be accepted to Club Nintendo. The Club Nintendo program shuts down in North America on June 30 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time and all Coins will be deleted when Club Nintendo accounts are closed on July 1, 2015.


As for those of us in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, we have been granted a little more time to prepare for the phase-out, with the removal of registration cards in new products delayed until after April 1st. The schedule for these regions is described by Nintendo thus:
April 1st 2015: From this date, Nintendo will no longer include product registration cards with its packaged products, so such products cannot be registered in Club Nintendo. You may still find product registration cards in products 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.
Nintendo are so far saying little about the service that is planned to replace Club Nintendo, though state the company expects to share more information about the new scheme and its launch date in the near future. What is known however is that it will exist as a service completely separated from the old Club Nintendo system; and thus no data is being moved over. Therefore, in order to encourage users to use up their remaining Star (or Coin) balances before the service expires, dozens of downloadable games and "a limited quantity of exclusive reward items" will be added to the catalogue before its termination.


As an added incentive, the company plans to give out a new version of Flipnote Studio - Flipnote Studio 3D - for free to existing Club Nintendo members. Club Nintendo members in North America will receive a free download code for Flipnote Studio 3D in February 2015 automatically, most likely on launch date; for other regions, Nintendo state the code will be available as a welcome bonus for members who sign up to the new loyalty scheme in the first few weeks following its launch, with full details to come at a later date.


As a result of the closure, Nintendo have announced that the soon-to-be-released "New Nintendo 3DS" handheld consoles cannot be registered to Club Nintendo. These, it appears, will be rolled into the new system instead. However, Nintendo 3DS games - including those intended mainly for the New Nintendo 3DS - may still be registered if they have been or will be released before the registrations cards are phased out.
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