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.

If you’ve recently responded to an e-mail from Mojang asking you to confirm your account details, please read on. Because you might be glad you did.

Mojang have confirmed that phishers, who get private account details from people usually by imitating official channels be they ‘human’ or site-based, have posted the details of around 1,800 Mojang account details with usernames to a forum for phishers. Mojang have now contacted everyone whose details were on that list, so go check your e-mails – if you’ve been contacted change your password now. If you’ve not been contacted you don’t need to change your password, but it might be a good excuse to do so if you’ve not for a while.

Either way, Mojang have force reset the affected accounts so you’ll need to change the password anyway the next time you log in. So no worries, your account will not be gone if you’ve no time to log in for a while.

Mojang have released a blog post with the amusingly captioned graphic below briefly explaining what has happened, assuring us that no one’s hacked them so there’s no need to worry. Only a lesson to be learned – never trust an e-mail asking you to confirm account details even if it looks legit.

Mojang site “Let’s talk about password security”: [x]

Evolve is nearing release, so what better time to grab a few games in the closed beta. I’ve been testing the beta to get a taste of what to expect when the game launches on February 10th; and in the second Youtube video of what should be a several week series, Zerocross, Lymara and I jump into the action against Goliath.

If you’re excited about Evolve, keep it locked here or on my channel where there will be a new Evolve video every Monday, Wednesday and Friday leading up the the launch of the game on February 10th! And don’t forget about our exclusive competition for a chance to win your own copy of Evolve on Steam!

According to a press release from publisher Sega, Alien: Isolation has sold around 1 million units of itself across all the platforms. While it’s not earth-shattering certainly, for a game that tried something different, shook up the horror genre a little it’s very good news indeed.

Creative Assembly were happy with the news and the reception of the game, which while not being 100% solidly positive (padding in the third act for example was criticised) is certainly very much in favour of Isolation being considered a very good game.

“It has been fantastic to watch the reviews come in and read of the reactions of players, hidden in the bowels of Sevastopol Station, terrified to make the next move,” said Creative Lead, Alistair Hope, “We set out to make the Alien game we had always wanted to play and from these figures it seems we also succeeded in making the Alien game another million wanted to play. We hope many more gamers enjoy Alien: Isolation in 2015.”

It’s always nice to see a game that tries something different actually being well-received. After all, technology and gaming should always seek to improve and innovate around what’s already typical, just like any creative medium.

After speculation about whether Bethesda’s MMO The Elder Scrolls Online was due to move to a free-to-play model due to the removal of some subscription options and other actions that fitted with the pattern other MMOs have taken before changing to a similar model. Now Bethesda have confirmed that yes, they are changing it. To a single-payment model similar to Guild Wars 2.

The director of ESO, Matt Finor said that they were listening to fan feedback with the changes. “We know that Elder Scrolls fans want choice when it comes to how they play and how they pay, and that is what they will get.”

The game is scheduled for release on the new-gen consoles on June 9th, but the game will go single-payment a little under three months before that on March 17th. Zenimax have confirmed that the single-payment system will give players access to the full launched game along with all existing updates and future Justice and Champion systems.

All existing accounts will be updated to reflect the new payment model and subscribers updated to Premium memberships – able to gain in-game bonuses as well as having access to DLC and a monthly allotment of Crowns all for a monthly fee. Crowns are going to be the paid-for currency for a new in-game store also arriving in March. TESO will now make money via purchasable cosmetic and convinience items from this store, although regular players will get new toys via the updates that come along.

It might not be f2p, but does the idea of paying just once for the game make you want to try TESO again, especiallu with recent updates bringing in a justice system?