Slashdot Mirror
Club Nintendo Goes Live
AKAImBatman writes "Nintendo has launched their new North American Club Nintendo service that allows customers to earn 'coins' for purchasing Nintendo products. Coins can then be redeemed for items like exclusive DS games, playing cards, Wii Remote holders, DS cases, and other Nintendo branded items. Points are earned by registering Wii games (50 points), DS games (30 points), or by purchasing Wii Shop items (10 points) after your Wii Shop account has been linked to your Club Nintendo account. Users may link their account under the 'Settings' area of the Wii Shop channel. Prices range from 300 coins for a Wii Remote holder to 800 coins for the Game & Watch Collection for the Nintendo DS."
Here's the link I originally submitted: http://www.wiimedia.com/news/view/club_nintendo_goes_live/
The information is more or less the same, but Ars takes a very negative view on the service and the issues they're having.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
that link works just fine for me
A Brief YouTube History of the Steve Jobs Macworld Expo Keynote
Not much really worthwhile there, is there. I guess I could get wii-branded bucket to hold my wii remotes, but I bet I could get a cheap rubbermade thing at wal-mart for just a couple bucks easier.
The reset on coins every "year" really sucks out any enthusiasm I'd have for this. Not sure if it is fear of the resale market (register games I'd paid $10 for instead of $60) or simply another inducement for kids to buy the next copy of Pokemon garnet-spiral ham, but as a long time consumer of the Big N's products this comes off as kind of dickish.
Why is it that the only retail games purchased with codes redeemable are Nintendo's first-party titles? In Japan, pretty much every game, including third-party, comes with a Club Nintendo code to redeem. It's much easier there to gain codes than it is here.
Sure, the only games for Wii that I'd be willing to spend money on are most likely first-party, but for the DS? My money is on third-party.
And none of my old GC games are eligible? Why?
In case any other potential mods are reading my description of Home as a "bundle of excitement" was intended to be sarcastic.
Perhaps someone misread my post as saying "bundle of excrement".
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I just logged in and converted my "My Nintendo" membership into "Club Nintendo" membership. It recognized 4 games and 1 Wiiware title that I had previously registered, and then allowed me to take a survey for each game. The surveys were pretty vague but after I was all finished I already have 210 coins. The biggest beef I've had since the beginning of my Wii experience is the fact that only Nintendo-brand games like Mario, Zelda, etc qualify to be registered. The dozen or so other games I've bought did not qualify, and there's not a good way to tell before hand if a game will qualify. I remember at the very beginning they advertised some deal like "register 5 games and get a free prize" however I could not find 5 games being sold that would qualify (this was like around 6 months after the Wii was released).
The Japanese version of this has much more interesting rewards. I know the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack was offered. There were limited edition DS's (just a special skin) and I can't remember what else.
Hopefully I'll be able to add the rest of my wii/ds games and the consoles. It's kinda weird how the eligible games are picked. I bought my Wii on launch day with Twilight Princess and Excite Truck but only TP was eligible.
If it is anything like Nintendo's European efforts, good luck with actually getting anything worthwhile.
The best you'll end up with is a crappy wallpaper as they'll only have 5 DS cases available between the hundreds of thousands of users.
Where you can amass 6000 points having spent a small fortune on games, only to receive an e-mail telling you unused points will be whiped after 6months. You then wait around for something interesting to come up and when it does you find they already whiped your points... after 3 months.
It is at this point where I decided club nintendo is little more than a con, there is no reason whatsoever than ripping off customers to erase unused points, let alone in a time period less than that stated.
In other words, I simply wouldn't waste my time with it anymore.
If I get 100 coins, do I get another chance at life?
My Chintendo Vii don't need no stinkin club. Its all quality, right out of the box.
Actually, it's kind of dead in here. I would have expected more people to be excited about this.
/., you, you, 9-10-Nerd!
What do you expect, the same kind of excitement a new Playboy Club opening gets? Your expectations are too nerdy even for
damn you, ./
im trying to use that site! =D
i guess this is some kind of incentive not to pirate the bigN's first party titles....
How many coins can I get for a Camel buck?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sadly enough this site blows goes. I get errors and when I click on things it logs me out or 404. I am part of club nintendo japan and that site works like clock-work. Get game, input coupon, answer a few questions and points are posted. The American site seems very similar to respect when inputting a code. The only code of mine that carried over was Mario Party 8. As it stands right now its way too much effort to get 'coins'. Hopefully they'll get it right here soon because as it stands they are having a meltdown.
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
I was just saying to myself the other day, "Self, you really need to involve more corporations in your purchasing decisions." I mean, I already had a customer loyalty card from the grocery store and just finished taking a survey from Slashdot that roamed from which websites I view to my wife's income to the kind of underwear I prefer, but that just wasn't enough! Thanks, Nintendo, for being there for me when I really needed someone to monitor everything I buy and then reward me with a pittance so long as accept their valuable limited time offer.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"Coin! Coin!" -Mummy from "Scooby Doo Where Are You?" episode. Sorry this obscure reference stuck in my head from childhood!
For the MyNintendo site. Funny that they have a password retrieval system, but no way to retrieve a forgotten username.
Kind of reminds me of kool-aid points, but I guess they're not giving away cups or backbacks, it's real product, which is nice. I just remember saving up for like a year and getting two plastic cups- I still have those suckers somewhere. A friend of mine exchanged about 7 games for one new one at EB games- it seemed really unfair at the time, but games are really pricey.
hasnt this been out 4 like ages? or is that just here in england?
That's not entirely true. There are many interesting prizes, such as games, which are still available, but the problem is that they cost an awful lot of points. Here's the top items that you can buy at the moment in the European Club Nintendo 's Stars Catalogue with their sale price in points:
There are many fashion accessories and cute gadgets among the less expensive items; you can also turn your star points into Wii points.
I registered 10 GameCube games since I joined and barely earned 4000 points. I haven't bought games since then and Nintendo did something that is certainly not going to encourage me to change that: this year, they decided that some games people have registered are now too old! So they withdrew the points from our totals, just like that! For me that's 2800 points vaporized. And they plan to do that every year. Imagine if your banker decided that some of the money you have on your account come from salaries that go back too far in time and just took the money away. I feel that's what Nintendo did. You don't take back what you give, that's plain stealing. Besides, this new system favours kids who can spend a lot of money in games and doesn't reward other patient loyal fans. That really didn't help improve the rather negative image that I've been having of Nintendo lately.
So watch out for Nintendo's nasty tricks in the US too!
The biggest fail in all this .. not calling them rupees.*
* no, not really
and of course, it doesn't count for beans NOW, even though it shows that i've already registered tons of stuff. yay, punished for my loyalty!