After six years, Club Nintendo is finally shutting down to make way for their next customer loyalty program–which Nintendo claims is currently under works.
Club Nintendo is a loyalty program that rewards the user with Coins for registering new games, hardware, and doing a few surveys. These Coins are used on various digital or physical rewards, such as retro virtual console games or 3DS Game Card carriers. Members have until the end of March to register their Club Nintendo products, and until it shuts down on June 30th to spend all of their Coins.
Spend ’em if You Got ’em
Nintendo will be releasing dozens of rewards starting in February to help members spend all of their coins. Also in February–Flipnote Studios 3D will become available as a free download for all Club Nintendo members until it closes at the end of June. As soon as April hits you won’t be able to make a Club Nintendo account, so keep that in mind.
Flipnote Studios 3D is a basic drawing game that allows you to share your creations with friends or save them to your SD card. There was some controversy back in October when Nintendo pulled a somewhat similar application called SwapNote, so I wonder what steps they have taken to combat NSFW content in this app. After all, they wouldn’t want the system to be used for sharing “offensive material” again.
We’ve known for awhile that Club Nintendo was on a downhill spiral. The biggest hint came from Club Nintendo in Japan, when members lost their Platinum and Gold Status at the end of September.
It’s been six years in the running, and Club Nintendo is finally drawing to a close. The years of coins and free retro games were fantastic, and I can only begin to imagine where Nintendo will take their customer loyalty programs next. Currently, there is no indication about how Nintendo will handle customer loyalty services after Club Nintendo ends.
