Club Nintendo: flagship rewards programme is closed as company plans Wii U revamp

Programme will be brought to an end in September, and replaced with something new

The largest collection of Nintendo Entertainment System paraphernalia belongs to Ahmed Bin Fahad (UAE) and consists of 2,020 items and was verified in Dubai, UAE

Nintendo is to close its rewards programme, potentially making way for a revamp of the Wii U as it lags behind Sony and Microsoft’s consoles.

Club Nintendo was introduced in December 2007 as a way of combining two of the company’s previous loyalty schemes. It provided rewards for giving feedback to Nintendo and buying official products.

Nintendo said that they had consulted around six million members of the programme in Europe and South Africa, and decided to pull Club Nintendo.

It will be replaced by a new programme, to be launched later this year, Nintendo said.

Club Nintendo will be gradually pulled throughout 2015, the company wrote in a blog post announcing the cancellation. Products will not be able to be registered from the beginning of April 2015 and digital products downloaded from its shop will be cancelled on April 20.

The programme will be fully cancelled at the end of September. That is when the stars that are given out as rewards will be cancelled, and so Nintendo advises anyone that is part of the programme to spend them before then.

The company is giving away Flipnote Studio 3D, a piece of animation software for Nintendo 3DS, to Club Nintendo members for free.