Club Nintendo has always been a unique mix of data collection/loyalty rewards program from Nintendo- it was a program that offered you with exclusive Nintendo merchandise and digital games just for buying their products. It was pretty neat, and it offered a nice alternative to programs like PS+ or Xbox Live Gold.
But its quality has declined in recent years, and now we know why- Nintendo today announced that they would be flat out discontinuing the program worldwide, effective immediately, although you can still earn additional coins through to the end of March, and redeem them till June 30. Nintendo confirmed that it is planning on introducing a brand new loyalty program later this year. Nintendo will also be making Flipnote Studio 3D for the 3DS available for free for all Club Nintendo members in February.
“We thank all Club Nintendo members for their dedication to Nintendo games and their ongoing love for our systems and characters,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “We want to make this time of transition as easy as possible for our loyal Club Nintendo members, so we are going to add dozens of new rewards and downloadable games to help members clear out their Coin balances.”
Last year, Nintendo indicated that it wanted to have a loyalty program that tied in better with its digital games strategy- it followed up on this sentiment by using Club Nintendo to distribute exclusive demos for anticipated games like Super Smash Bros., Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, and Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire. Whatever the new Nintendo loyalty rewards program is like, let’s hope that it is more consistent and with better rewards overall than Club Nintendo was by the end.
