Is this My Nintendo?: A Look At Nintendo’s New Reward System

Nintendo’s new fan appreciation service, My Nintendo, started today. I was already signed up for the service and decided to go to take a look at what it had to offer. Here are my first impressions of My Nintendo!

Nintendo has always wanted to reward its fan somehow. For a long while, their reward system was Club Nintendo. That service is dead now and its replacement started today. My Nintendo is very different from Club Nintendo. The biggest difference is that there are no longer any physical rewards to be had (at least so far). Instead, My Nintendo is completely digital right now.

I will definitely miss the physical rewards. North America never did get the great physical rewards that Europe and Japan got, but it did get some neat stuff once and while. I’m not convinced that I’m going to like this completely digital My Nintendo experience. I won’t rule it out though and I’d say its too soon to tell if the service will be good or not.

I can say that there is not much on offer for the service at present. There are some discounts for some games, a few Miitomo rewards, a few actual games, and two themes. To get any of these rewards, you have to earn points. There are Platinum points and Gold points. I think there may be points for the cellphone game too but I’m not sure. The main points to think about are the Platinum and Gold ones.

Platinum points are pretty easy to get. There are various “missions”, like linking your twitter account to My Nintendo, that you can do right away. After your first easy mission, My Nintendo will want you to use some of your points to get a box to keep your points in. This is a very nice visual that will be at the top of your My Nintendo page. Its a shame you have to use some of your points to get this visual, but don’t worry: you'[ll quickly get more points by doing other things! You can easily get yourself one of the My Nintendo themes on your first visit if you want. I did this and got the Donkey Kong theme. I like it a lot. My mom & dad got Mario themes and it looks pretty cool too.

If you want to get Gold points, you’ll have to buy stuff from the Nintendo eshop (Wii U or 3DS). That seems to be the only way to get Gold points right now. It also seems like the best rewards, Discounts and games, are reserved for the Gold points. Though if you save up a bunch of Platinum points you can get My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. Its a very “pricey” special game though and will take awhile to get. I have no interest in a Picross game, so I’ll avoid it. Hopefully there will be something cooler in the future.

We can hope that the “missions” in My Nintendo and the rewards will change often. It would also be great to see some better rewards along the way. I’m not sure about My Nintendo yet. The website is easier to use than Club Nintendo and the process for redeeming and getting points is faster and there are a lot more ways to get points. But I will miss getting physical rewards. Plus: it doesn’t look like there’s a way to register physical games like there was with Club Nintendo. So, Nintendo is rewarding people who buy through the eshop(s) and giving those who buy through retail the shaft. I hope this will change (along with there being some physical rewards), but I have my doubts. I also wish there was a way to access My Nintendo through your 3DS and/or Wii U. Here’s hoping for a My Nintendo app in the future!

One last thing thats bugging me at the moment is that, unlike Club Nintendo, you can only register one Wii U system and one 3DS system to My Nintendo. So I guess you’d have to have multiple e-mails and profiles for multiple systems. It sounds like a real pain. Will My Nintendo be worth it in the end? Only time will tell.

What do you think of My Nintendo so far? Let us know in the comments!