When did Club Nintendo first appear in Japan?
Club Nintendo first appeared in Japan on the 31st of October 2003. This launch marked the second official Nintendo reward program to be set up globally.
Club Nintendo first appeared in Japan on the 31st of October 2003. This launch marked the second official Nintendo reward program to be set up globally.
Perrin Kaplan, then vice president of Marketing for Nintendo of America, explained that the US market size made the program prohibitively expensive to establish. Customer demand eventually forced Nintendo to relented and announce a Club Nintendo program for North America in October 2008.
Members earned credits or coins by submitting codes found on Nintendo products and systems to trade in for special edition items only available through Club Nintendo. Rewards included objects such as playing cards, tote bags, controllers, downloadable content, warranty extensions, keyrings, calendars, exclusive pins, t-shirts, soundtrack albums, and game controllers.
On the 20th of January 2015, Nintendo announced that Club Nintendo would be discontinued in all regions during the year. The program ended in North America on the 30th of June 2015 while Europe and Japan saw their final day on the 30th of September 2015.
The successor program superseded Club Nintendo for the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch alongside other devices such as tablets, smartphones and PCs. It launched initially in Japan on the 17th of March 2016 and the rest of the world received My Nintendo on the 31st of March 2016 launching alongside Nintendo's first mobile app Miitomo.