Meet The 'My Nintendo' Rewards Service

Alongside its new smartphone app, Nintendo also launched its new rewards program today called "My Nintendo".

The My Nintendo rewards program differs from the old “Nintendo Rewards” system in that instead of earning just one type of coin or star, My Nintendo uses three different points as pseudo-currency. There are the more common Platinum Points and Miitomo Platinum Points, which are essentially the same thing for the time being. Then there are Gold Points.

Different rewards are offered for different types of points. Right now all the rewards available accept Platinum Points or Miitomo Platinum Points, but later rewards may accept just one of the two.

Earning points in the “My Nintendo” rewards program is easier than it was in the old Nintendo Rewards system. You can earn Platinum Points and Platinum Miitomo Points by simply signing into Nintendo services on a weekly basis, linking your social media accounts to your Nintendo account, or for just about anything you do in Miitomo.

You can acquire Gold Points by buying Nintendo eShop games, and the more money you spend the more points you will earn on each individual purchase, up to 80 Gold Points on purchases of $70 or more. This is somewhat similar to how you earned points before on Club Nintendo, but there you were required to also review the games to receive most of the coins or stars, whereas now you simply need to buy the game to earn Gold Points.

The rewards available are fairly similar to what was available on the Nintendo Club website. All of the game rewards currently available except My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess require the more valuable Gold Points. There are also game coupons and Miitomo items available that use Platinum Points. There are coupons that use Gold Points too, but the ones that need Gold Points offer larger discounts.

One somewhat surprising change in the new rewards program is that points expire significantly faster than they used to. Club Nintendo kept your coins or stars for a minimum of two years before they expired, letting you save up to buy more valuable rewards. The My Nintendo program, however, removes all of your points regardless of what type they are after just six months.

This significantly limits your ability to trade in your points for better rewards. For example, to get the New Super Mario Bros. U DLC New Super Luigi U, you would need to have 170 Gold Points. That means in order to get this game, you would need to spend a minimum of $85 in a total of 17 individual Nintendo eShop transactions in less than six months.

Granted, you could do it in fewer transactions, but you receive fewer Gold Points per dollar as the amount you spend increases. If you wanted to knock it out in just three transactions, you would end up spending $145. Either way, it means you would need to spend quite a bit in a relatively short amount of time in order to get the best rewards.

Similar to the old rewards program, My Nintendo will offer new rewards on the first of each month. The new My Nintendo rewards program is online now.

Follow Michael Justin Allen Sexton @EmperorSunLao. Follow us onFacebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.