Club Nintendo Rewards Program Closing Schedule Announced, Use Your Coins By June 30

News
By Michael Justin Allen Sexton
published

Following the announcement that Club Nintendo will be shutting down, Nintendo announced a schedule for the gradual discontinuation of service.

The shut down of services began on January 20. New products released after this date are no longer eligible for registration with Club Nintendo. Titles such as Hyrule Warriors that were released before this date still can be registered, though.

Nintendo will likely stop putting the Club Nintendo cards with registration codes inside of these older games, but many of the units have already been produced and will contain the registration code.

The last day that users can earn coins, either by registering games or completing surveys, will be March 31. At that time, Club Nintendo will also stop accepting new accounts.

If you've been saving up coins, you can still use them until June 30, 11:59pm PST. Thereafter, the Club Nintendo program will completely shut down, and you won't even be able to access your account.

The bright side is that Nintendo announced that it will start a new rewards program sometime after Club Nintendo shuts down, but there are no details yet about how this program will work. Nintendo did say that remaining rewards balances will not be transferable from Club Nintendo to the new program, so you should use saved up coins or stars while you have the chance.

The good news is that Club Nintendo will be giving free loyalty gifts out to users who qualified for Elite or Platinum status. These rewards will come between April 1 and April 30, which is earlier than in previous years. When they're announced, you'll be able to view reward options on Club Nintendo's website.

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Michael Justin Allen Sexton
Michael Justin Allen Sexton is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers hardware component news, specializing in CPUs and motherboards.
6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thundervore
    Its like Nintendo is trying to piss off as many loyal fans as possible. First the new 3DS with no charger, now Club Nintendo shutdown. Whats next no more free game included when you buy a new system?
    Reply
  • coolitic
    (Stupid quote button not working)
    @thundervore, no charger is because most people already have many ds chargers piling up (most of the people I know anyways) and it isn't that expensive to get a charger. Also, nobody I know uses Club Nintendo (maybe register once but not used actively)
    Reply
  • VeggieburgrCyndaquil
    Chargers are $1.50 at my nearest Walmart. They are $3 at ToyRus. The used game stores have them for $0.50.
    Reply
  • eastyy
    Shame they did nothing for us in europe
    Reply
  • Spanky Deluxe
    Stuff like this really alienates their customers. I used to be a big fan of Nintendo stuff and collected a lot of stars (what they called points in the European store). I bought a Gamecube, loads of games for that, Gameboy Advance and a Wii, loads of games for that too. I had thousands of points collected but kept them saved up as the only rewards online that I was interested in were the memory cards etc that sold out really fast. I had no interest in using the points for background pictures etc which was all that was offered.

    Then suddenly, Nintendo decided to change their policy to say that any nintendo points older than a year would expire. Still, the items that I wanted to spend them on didn't appear and I ended up losing thousands and thousands of stars. I had enough for several physical rewards but they were always instantly out of stock in the store.

    That change in policy felt like a betrayal to a loyal customer and honestly, I haven't bought a nintendo product since. No game, no no console, nothing. Loyalty meant something to me and Nintendo threw it in my face.
    Reply
  • rinder
    So what, I have to buy a charger separate its not like they cost a lot to begin with and besides it adds weight to shipment which jacks prices up. Technically by separating it from the system it actually saves the consumer money. example lets say shipment was $3 for less than 10 lbs and anything higher than that cost $10 if the new 3ds was 9.5 lbs and the charger was 0.5 lbs it would be much more cost effective separating it than it would be packaging it in the same box.
    Reply