Briefly: Better get spending those coins, as Nintendo’s beloved Club Nintendo won’t be around for much longer.
The loyalty program will begin spinning down before closing forever on July 1st. At that point, all accounts and unused coins will be deleted. Here’s what the big N had to say about the announcement:
Thank you for your continued loyalty to Nintendo.
We launched Club Nintendo 6 years ago in North America, and we’re grateful for all of the feedback that our members have provided on your experiences with our products.
In order to focus on planning for a new customer loyalty program for our fans, we’ve decided to wind-down the Club Nintendo program. We are deeply thankful to our members for being a part of Club Nintendo for all of these years.
We will share details about our new program at a later date. For now, please see the schedule below for information on the discontinuation timeframe for Club Nintendo.
All Coins will be deleted when Club Nintendo accounts are closed on July 1, 2015. As a result, to give our members the best opportunity to use their Coins, we will add dozens of downloadable games and a limited quantity of exclusive reward items to the rewards catalog in February. In addition, as a small token of appreciation for your loyalty, all Club Nintendo members will receive a free download code for Flipnote Studio 3D in February 2015. Please visit here for information on the software and how to get the download code.
Sad news for sure, but there’s definitely a silver lining here: a new rewards program will take its place at some point. I’m not really a FlipNote fan myself, but if the eventual new program can keep things in stock for more than a few minutes, I’m definitely down for the switch.
Here’s the schedule for the shutdown:
1/20/2015 – Products released after this date are not eligible for registration with Club Nintendo
3/31/2015 – Last day to earn Coins, register products with Club Nintendo, and sign up for new Club Nintendo membership
6/30/2015 – Last day to redeem Coins or access your account on the Club Nintendo website. Club Nintendo program shuts down at 11:59pm PT on 6/30/2015.
You can read the entire announcement here, and be sure to let us know what you think of the news. My take on the announcement? Sure, it’s unfortunate that they’re shutting down, but they also gave us a great six years while those other guys had no program at all.
Thanks for all the memories (and sweet rewards), Nintendo.
