The Club Nintendo Thread

[KillerDraco]

Yeah, not too thrilled about the rewards this year, but I'll still take my free stuff. After all, Platinum Status was incidental; I did not actively go out of my way to achieve it or anything.

I'll probably get Game & Wario or DKCR3D. They're basically the only games that 1) I don't have (although I do have DKCR for the Wii so meh), and 2) are the best value in terms of what they'd actually cost.

 

[Void Ventus]

i can understand why people would be upset that the reward is not some physical trinket, but at the same time, free is free, and you cant complain if you get something for free

Yeah, not too thrilled about the rewards this year, but I'll still take my free stuff. After all, Platinum Status was incidental; I did not actively go out of my way to achieve it or anything.

Free is free, so no one can complain about that. But I personally bought a few retail and downloadable games, and spent hours doing post-play surveys to get enough coins to get to Platinum, hoping to get an awesome physical gift. What makes this worse is that today, the Japanese Club Nintendo got a Yoshi plushie as a normal prize. I thought Club Nintendo was to entice more people to buy games, and if they reach enough points, will get something exclusive.

 

[Zachmac]

After all, Platinum Status was incidental; I did not actively go out of my way to achieve it or anything.

Same here. I'm not going to spend extra money for a something when I don't even know what it is.

I'm grabbing Earthbound. I'm not really all that excited for it, but since I'm an active part of the Nintendo fandom these days, I figure I might as well see what this game really is.

 

[tomatohater]

After a lot of deliberation, I have finally chosen to get Pikmin 3 as my free downloadable game for MK8. I will get it from the eShop later, and hopefully it will be worthwhile!

 

[Trevenant]

Free is free, so no one can complain about that.

Unless you regularly steal Club Nintendo codes, the rewards are far from free.

A bunch of VC re-re-releases combined with a bunch of 10-20$ games for the year-end reward is... terrible.
At least the trinkets are unique to Club Nintendo. These games you can get any time, and they're incredibly cheap.

The Gold rewards weren't worth the money it costs to be a Gold member---Platinum definitely wasn't.

 

[Zachmac]

Unless you regularly steal Club Nintendo codes, the rewards are far from free.

Except that we weren't buying it for the codes, we were buying the games. I didn't get Pokemon Y or Donkey Kong Country just so that I could get some secret prize at the end of the year. If the codes influenced your decision making process that dramatically when deciding to buy the games, then you need to get your money spending priorities strait.

Even if it's technically not free, it may as well be.

Granted, I would prefer a better selection, but that doesn't mean I have to feel like I've been scammed.

 

[Tangeh]

Except that we weren't buying it for the codes, we were buying the games. I didn't get Pokemon Y or Donkey Kong Country just so that I could get some secret prize at the end of the year. If the codes influenced your decision making process when deciding to buy the games, then you need to get your money spending priorities strait.

Even if it's technically not free, it may as well be.

Granted, I would prefer a better selection, but that doesn't mean I have to feel like I've been scammed.

Agreed. I didn't spend any extra money or buy any extra games to get platinum status this year. This just happened to be the year I got my 3DS, Wii U, and a boatload of games to go with 'em. I probably won't attain platinum status for a long while again, because it isn't worth going out of my way for and I don't think it ever was something worth going out of your way for.

 

[Trevenant]

Except that we weren't buying it for the codes, we were buying the games.

It doesn't matter. The codes still cost money, do they not? This might be an interesting read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch

Even if it's technically not free, it may as well be.

No, it isn't. Free implies no cost. There is indeed a cost.

Free implies no cost. Club Nintendo codes do have a price attached - whatever the game's price was, and the Gold/Platinum rewards were far from worth it this year, with absolutely nothing unique to it (trinkets, etc), and everything being a marginal 5-20$ (with only two games being 20$, the rest are 10$ or less).

If the codes influenced your decision making process when deciding to buy the games, then you need to get your money spending priorities strait.

Strait?

You're entirely right, Club Nintendo codes shouldn't ever influence someone's decision to buy a game.

The money-to-reward ratio was always balanced in that it had unique toys or statues or something. So those were worth it because they weren't available elsewhere. Re-re-releases of games most people already have on several platforms aren't, and even not counting the VC games... none of that is worth the cost of being a Gold/Platinum member.

 

[KillerDraco]

You both are attempting to argue semantics, in which case, both of you are right. Yes, you have to spend money to obtain Club Nintendo codes. However, if you were going to buy the games anyway, and you're paying the retail price for said game, then you're not having to pay any additional money for the code that you wouldn't be otherwise spending on the game itself.

That said, no one's denying that the Elite rewards suck this year, and were not at all worth it, but for those who did not go out of their way to get Elite status (i.e., those who would have bought the games regardless of the Club Nintendo codes), then it somewhat mitigates the annoyance. That's all.

 

[Tangeh]

^ Yup. It's a bit like somebody who buys coffee from the same coffee place every day, and then that coffee place holds a promotion to which after you buy one coffee for four straight days, you get a fifth coffee for free. There's a certain "cost" associated with the free coffee, but to this particular consumer, it is less than if they had had to pay for the fifth day.

Compare to a different customer who perhaps switched their daily routine to go to this coffee shop for the "free" promotion. Then that free coffee would have additional costs tied in with potential additional costs of travel, opportunity cost of their time, potential price differences in this coffee compared to wherever they went for their old coffee, etc.

In this case, Zachmac and I are the first example. Trevenant is the second.

edit: oo, wait, I thought of a simpler example.

Free promotion: free small coffee with purchase of cinnamon bun. Assuming cinnamon buns cost more than a small coffee, compare somebody who buys cinnamon buns every day to somebody who just wants to buy a cinnamon bun to take advantage of the promotion. One person is getting a bonus free coffee that, for them, cost them nothing extra. The other is getting their "free" coffee, but was is worth the cost of the cinnamon bun and additional travel expenses/ whatever?

Or, you know, replace cinnamon buns with Nintendo games and coffee with club Nintendo points.

(I'm a 4th year BBA major, but economics was never really my thing tbh >_> lol)

 

[ellie]

yeah not too thrilled about the prizes either. this is the first time i have done club nintendo (i started to get the free digital download of X/Y with mk7) and i was hoping for something cool at the end of the year. i was semi-interested in some of the games anyway so it's not a total loss, but i highly prefer physical things.


and to everyone saying it's "free," it is but it isn't. have you ever heard the phrase "if you're not the customer (i.e. you're not paying), you're the product"? club nintendo is exactly that. all that marketing data we provide for them when we do the registration and post-play surveys is incredibly valuable to nintendo, and they get it for next to nothing by offering us free games and other small prizes. we all give this willingly and it's still a good deal for us since most of the time we get nothing at all for providing marketing data, but to imply that nintendo is just giving their loyal customers freebies out of the goodness of their hearts is wrong. i was a stats minor in college, it's very hard/expensive to get good data like this most of the time so nintendo is getting quite a lot in return for what they're giving us.

not saying that entitles us to physical goods of course. just making an observation. i really hope this isnt setting a trend for all future deals because i'm not a huge fan of digital games anyway, especially the way nintendo handles it.

 

[Tangeh]

Digital media costs next to nothing to reproduce and distribute. Mass producing and shipping posters or whatever is hardly bank-breaking, but if they can get away with giving out not-so-popular digital games, then I see the logic in the short-term. All they'd be losing is the potential for pure profit on games that likely won't give them much more anyways (& they'd be getting some bonus advertising on them too, which honestly would probably make up for that).

Physical products definitely have more of an impressive factor to them, though. Like when I whip out those playing cards I got from the platinum rewards in 2012 and everyone at the table is like "OMG MARIO where'd you get those??" and then I spread the word about club Nintendo which benefits the company and whatever. Given how Nintendo's been struggling against the competition, I'm not sure if digital rewards were really the way to go. Giving out some flashy rewards - especially given how many Club Nintendo promotions went on this year so there'd be many prizes given to many different people - might have been the better option. But I'll take what I've been given, of course. I already paid for it after all, haha.

 

[DaAuraWolf]

Disappointed by the lack of physical rewards this time around but actually like it that they are offering EarthBound as one of the Platinum. I mean, All of the choices they had were something that you could easily buy off the eShop normally with money. It would have been nice though if they instead offered something like the 3DS Ambassador Program as the main Platinum reward with 10 GameCube and N64 Virtual Console titles that act as a Sneak Peak at the games. That would have been a great reward for the money that you spent on getting the games that helped you rack up the 600 Coins to get Platinum.

Other than that. Guess I'll be picking up NES Remix since it's the only title that I haven't got and interested in getting.

 

[AuraChannelerChris]

Whee, I won a free download code to download the special Kirby 3D shot.

 

[Puma Italia]

I was only a Gold member so I ended up getting Zelda 2. It's one of the only Zelda games I never actually beat so I'll get around to it eventually.

 

[MDS777]

I would've preferred a physical reward myself, but I went ahead and got Game & Wario. I'm downloading it now...

 

[Excitable Boy]

nurth 'murica

 

[Zachmac]

Star Fox 64, for free. :O

I'm getting it.

 

[KillerDraco]

I would so get Star Fox 64 on my Wii U... if I hadn't already gotten it a few months back when they last offered it. Seems like they're going in a cycle, but maybe it's just for all the people with new Wii U's. In any event, I would anticipate this means we'll see Super Mario 64 up for grabs within the next month or two.

 

[Zachmac]

I would so get Star Fox 64 on my Wii U... if I hadn't already gotten it a few months back when they last offered it.

Did they?

I must of missed that. I've never been good at following Club Nintendo. I did forget to pick up a golden nunchuk, after all...