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
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?
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 I get 100 coins, do I get another chance at life?
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!