Good Bye Club Nintendo

Club_NintendoClub Nintendo is a customer loyalty program run by Nintendo. It launched in North America on October 2, 2008. Its goal was to reward people for buying their games and allow people to send feedback directly to Nintendo via survey about each game. Inside the box of every Nintendo system, Nintendo game, or Nintendo sponsored game, you would find a little piece of paper with the words Club Nintendo and a 14 digit number. After registering a game you would get coins based on the game’s price $1 = 1 coin, and you would have a chance to fill out a survey for an additional 10 coins. This survey allowed you to give Nintendo feedback and comment on the game. Nintendo has decided to discontinue Club Nintendo in North America on June 30, 2015.

There are some good things and some bad things about the discontinuation of Club Nintendo that I would like to talk about. Let’s start with the bad things. The first is the survey feature, which allowed anyone who bought the product to give Nintendo feedback, will no longer exist. Nintendo has been listening to its fans and it may have been because of these surveys. Even if it isn’t the only way to get Nintendo’s attention, it was helpful for those not part of the videogame press to get Nintendo to listen. The other big thing part of Club Nintendo that will be missing is the rewards. The rewards are earned by redeeming the coins you receive for completing a survey and registering products. The rewards are then shipped to you completely free, unless the reward is digital in which case you are emailed a code. Rewards ranged from Virtual Console games, physical games, shirts, posters, tote bags and more. The other type of reward was a 90 day extension which you received if you registered the console. The rewards that you used to get from Club Nintendo will be gone forever.

The good things about Club Nintendo ending also deal with the rewards and surveys. Club Nintendo isn’t exactly new and there is a lot the public may not know about how it works. Nintendo has announced that a new loyalty program is coming in 2015 after Club Nintendo is officially discontinued. This is the good news. Of course nothing I am about to say can be confirmed, but here are just some thoughts. For a couple of years, people have wanted better rewards from Club Nintendo this could be the way they do it. There have also been complaints about cross-buy not being available on Virtual Console games. The reason for this may have been Club Nintendo fault because it wasn’t designed to support cross-buy. In addition to this, Club Nintendo can be holding back a unified account system that companies such as Sony and Microsoft have. This system which is where a person buys a game for their account not their console meaning if they change consoles they still have access to all the digital games they bought on the previous one. There is also the possibility that Nintendo didn’t like the way the survey system was working and they want to build an easier and faster way to get feedback directly from the people buying and playing their games.

Although I am sad to see Club Nintendo go, I am excited about all the new possibilities that may arise thanks to Club Nintendo’s end. So, what do you think about Club Nintendo closing? Do you believe it is good or bad?

 

References

https://club.nintendo.com/home.do — Official Club Nintendo website

http://club2.nintendo.com/program-notice/ — Important Information on Club Nintendo Program Discontinuation

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/01/club_nintendo_to_close_with_replacement_loyalty_programme_coming_later_in_the_year — Nintendo’s replacement loyalty program announced

 

Picture from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Nintendo — article

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/Club_Nintendo.png —direct image link

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