It's out with the old and in with the new as gaming giant, Nintendo, announced that it would shutdown its Club Nintendo Rewards program after nearly seven years of showering club members perks from free downloads to t-shirts.
The rewards program gave several incentives to loyal Nintendo players and enthusiasts. However, their numbers were not enough to pull up the rewards program's stats causing it to be relatively weak in the market. In a statement, Nintendo thanked their loyal fan base and promised a new scheme that would broaden and diversify the incentives for all Nintendo users.
The Club Nintendo Rewards program's shutdown meant a new game plan for providing perks through points. The club members used to gain points known as coins or stars, which were redeemed each time a club member enters a code from products bought from Nintendo. With the rewards program about to close, many fans a left with unused coins or stars.
Add to that, the proliferation of free game downloads on hand held devices was a chink on Nintendo's armor; it made maintaining such a big program very challenging. The gaming company announced that it has started to look at ways to make this transition easy for their fans and manageable on their end. Nintendo also mentioned that it's planning to release fresh content that could be downloaded in exchange for the unused coins. The gaming giant also looking on the possibility of tapping their new software, "Flipnote 3D" where users could create and share their animated 3D creations, as part of the free content package to jump start the new system to replace Club Nintendo.
On June 30th the rewards program would be discontinued in the US followed by a shutdown on September 30th in other parts of the globe.
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