Details Emerge on How Nintendo Accounts Will Work

Ah, at last. Good news!

Theaters? Huh... Maybe we will be getting Nintendo movies. I'm kind of interested in this new membership program as well. Sounds like it's leagues ahead of Club Nintendo.

Kewl!

This is really sounding like some major hype, but let's hope they can back this all up somehow! Linking together so many things is...interesting, to say the least...

Sounds interesting.

How would Movie theaters and Theme parks fit in? Maybe you get discounts or something,

For a long time I've thought that a point system would be a perfect way for Nintendo to introduce achievments. If that's what this is, then I'm exited! I can't wait to hear more!

I wonder if they'll bring back physical rewards, though if they don't I hope they'll give out some decent downloadable rewards (no Metroid 2 included I've seen that game enough times)

Date?

Now we wait and see what happens. I'm intrigued.

Interesting. I like what I'm hearing.

Sweet! It would be nice if points were retroactive (got a LOT of hours on Smash 3DS).

I'm really interested in the rewards system and how you don't always need to buy new games for points. Exciting news indeed!

I'm just relieved that we heard something. I hope to learn more about this in the near future. Hopefully they begin this program very soon as well.

So these points sound like they will be used to obtain things like Club Nintendo. And you can get them while playing? Remember when Xbox first revealed Gamerscore and people thought you could use them to buy games? It could be a similar to that, with achievements unlocking points. I am sure that these points you get in achievements will be pennies compared to what you get from a full-on purchase, but a penny saved is a penny earned.

Excited to hear more.

My main question is will points earned through playing be retroactive? Meaning can we get points for the hours we have put in to games before the service is rolled out? For instance, some of us have played games that were released after Club Nintendo was shutdown and before My Nintendo will be rolled out, example: Tri Force Heroes. Will we automatically have points in our accounts when the My Nintendo service is launched, since we couldn't get points for registering the game on Club Nintendo?

Doesn't matter until we get actual control of our account systems.

I really hope that games we bought after Club Nintendo's closing can be registered for points on this new system. I have gotten around $250 worth of Nintendo stuff since then.

I'm excited.

Sounds more like Disney Movie Rewards, which is kind of what I was hoping Club Nintendo would be more like.

I would say that an achievement system would be better than raw play time, because anyone can really leave their system open for a few hours to earn points - while on the other hand, (most) achievements require some kind of gameplay or etc. to obtain

Classic @rjejr

So far so good. Seems like nothing is getting real until March 2016 though

All brilliant, but hopefully (yet unlikily) Club Nintendo user data still exists and will be transferred to the new accounts, whether the old games are still worth any points or not. That was a database of my game collection! Also, hopefully many games that have been released this year during the gap of Club Nintendo closing and "Nintendo Account" opening (ie, Splatoon, Majora 3D, Kirby and the Rainbow, etc.) will be worth "Nincount" credit.

@GoombaJMR That's what I'm thinking. I mean, how else would they know when and how many points to give to players? I'm guessing that there'll be some sort of trigger system in place like achievements, and once you do certain actions, it'll give you points to spend on stuff.

Not crazy about the name, but I haven't been crazy about Nintendo's naming system for a while now, so it doesn't come as a surprise. The details sound pretty interesting, and I'm glad to see "digital rewards" are a thing. I hope we're able to somehow add our recently purchased games and systems to the points system. I broke down and bought a New XL. That's a hefty nest egg of points right there.

@rjejr Good catch!

@enderboy221 Probably either exchange points for a discounted or free ticket, or perhaps to do with the annual Pokemon movies in Japanese theaters

Finally some real news...

If that means we're still lockrd to countries we created our NNID, then I'm as screwed as before. In my country I had to create two different NNIDs: one US for Wii U since there's no way to access e-shop and purchase stuff with a brazilian account; and one brazilian NNID for my 3DS since it's the only Nintendo system which have an available e-shop here. That's a mess. I have obviously more purchases on my local account, but there's also lots of digital games on my US Wii U.

I hope they get rid of this country limitation, otherwise, I won't be able yo register my ID on both Wii U and 3DS.

Wishlist for this revamped 'Club' system:

• Give it an achievement system. Having different ways to play a game and getting somewhat rewarded for it with a milestone is really nice. Hyrule Warriors kinda does this, but something akin to Steam achievements being jotted down the way they are would be so much nicer for showing them off.
• For the love of god don't give NA the shorter end of the stick. The American CN was absolutely terrible, it felt really unfair how EU and JP got way nicer physical goodies while NA was just lol terrible eShop games (which would repeat even) and really boring merch.
• Going off from what the article says, PLEASE go through with the idea to give points from just playing games. It's not fair that certain fans that don't have the money to spend on games constantly, have to miss out on goodies from a company (and their series) that they like. You don't need to purchase EVERYTHING to be a fan, reward people for making the most out of the games they do have, even if points awarded are less than when registering a game.

Aside from these things I kinda hope they allow users to change NNID names because I've wanted to do it, but if I do so by calling Nintendo I will keep my digital purchases and all, but I kinda lose all my save data and it's not worth it. I hope something is done about that cause I have way too many games where this would hit me a bit too hard.

Points for hours spent playing games instead of hours spent filling out surveys will be a relief.

Don't tie points to achievements, let me play how I want to play. Just don't add achievements period.

Points for playing sounds great.I wonder if it'll be integrated into their mobile games too where you can earn them even if you don't own any Nintendo consoles.Say someone who has never bought a Nintendo console before but is hooked on one of their mobile games,plays it so much they earn themselves a free NX game or credit towards one.Knowing they've earned that credit,they would want to buy an NX so they can use it.

@Fath give this man a medal already! 👏👏

They need to make the NNID region free.

Hmm, if you can log in using facebook, etc this is sounding more like account based than system tied.

See the latest Pokemon movie, get reward points? Or a way to replace codes to get your free Pokemon?

Finally! Looks good to me. And I'm glad about earning point by just playing games, I mean, it's been a while since Club Nintendo and I have bought a lot of games without getting any coin (I'll probably had 2-3 rewards by now). So hopefully, my purchases in the last couple of months could earn me some point in the new Nintendo Account.

I hope the new Club Nintendo will be open for all around the world.

Especially Europe needs to be one unified Nintendo Europe program for fans. The physical goods need to be shipped to any country, not just a few select ones.

It'd be cool if this could associate your eShop purchases with an account, rather than a specific console. I'm terrified of my Wii U dying someday and losing everything I've bought.

This all sounds good so far (admittedly it's a clone of the 13 year old XBL) but the biggest thing for me is cross buy for VC games. Really hope it's in there!

i hope it's global and not just in a few select countries (like Club Nintendo was)

This sounds like it's going to be much better than the old club nintendo. I hope this will also apply to purchases no longer being hardware tied, as they have avoided any mention of that in the reveal.

I'm quite excited about the new way points will work though! Maybe this is the death of those annoying surveys xD

No achievements sic please

I think this is absolutely great, March 2016 needs to get here

Any news if My Nintendo will work in the countries that were not included in Club Nintendo? I'd really like to find out if I should get excited about this or not, especially since they decided to give out the Flipnote 3D only for those who register for the new scheme in Europe.

As long as the cloud-service isn't forced on us, I am happy! I hate cloud-service, because if it stops you lose everything!

I preferred Club Nintendo.

I love achievements, and the idea of those working as a reward in the form of a monetary discount, even if small, sounds amazing. Looks like Iwata meant it when he talked about Club Nintendo and how he wanted a system that'd truly reward the players who buy a lot and PLAY a lot.

Excited to hear more about that. The rest sounds okay, I guess.

But the most important thing: will Europe receive the promised Flipnote 3D?

@Kolzig I agree with you. All the games came with the code, right? So we pay for the game AND for the code by default (because there were no option for buying a little bit cheaper game without the code) - which can result in a neat prize. It's really bad if you pay for something and you can't receive all the content that everyone else has. I actually had to cheat and ask a friend in UK to use his adress to ship a reward. Moreover I paid quite a lot for the shipping to my country. Now I think it would have been cheaper and easier just buying it from Ebay...

@Henmii It's still better than what we got now. If you loose your system, or if your system break, you loose everything you had on it - with all digital purchases and save data. With cloud at least you can re-download the stuff - at least I hope it will work in that way.

So, will my NNID still be tied to a single WiiU box? If so, then Nintendo account system is still epic fail. I assume though if you can buy digital games on the web direct to your NNID, it'd be balmy not to let you log in on any WiiU device with that NNID. (Otherwise it's be possible to (accidentally) purchase a game for a device you no longer own, or is damaged, unusable etc).

Also from a dev perspective, great that you can now point an online advert, tweet etc to the Nintendo website and have people purchase the digital game there and then. Should help tighten the purchasing experience. Wonder if Indies will be able to use this and/or whether it'll only come once the new IARC system goes live for Nintendo systems?

@JamesCoote You beat me to my question. All of this is nice, but unless it is finally freeing me from the risk of losing everything due to a bad console it is pointless.

So, I'm just going to ask.

If I buy Super Mario Bros on the 3DS, can I also download it on the Wii U without having to buy a separate version for each system?

In other words, like how Sony does it where if I buy say Final Fantasy VII as a PS1 Classic, that version can be be used on up to two PS3 and PSP consoles that are tied to the account that bought the game in the first place.

This sounds very promising! I'd love to rewarded for just playing my favorite games. I just need to see more details since there seems to be far more details surrounding Nintendo Accounts than what we have been shown. Hopefully they are saving the best bits for last!

I'm optimistic!!

@JamesCoote
With the new Nintendo account working on multiple devices, you will probably be able to manage your device account online. This will resolve issues of moving your profile (including purchases) to another console. I'm assuming their will be restrictions imposed on the number of devices you can attach but the announcement that its cloud based data exchange service (between devices) points towards s system where self management of devices is possible.

It certainly sounds like they're going to be doing everything right! I'm very happy

this new account system sounds very promising. I also hope the points earned from playing games are retro active as I've racked up a lot of hours playing Mario Kart 8 and I'd love to get a big infusion of point from that.

At last—yet it still not doing anything more than the competition have been offering for a very long time now.

This isn't exciting news or anything. It's just something we should have heard a long time ago, and getting it now is mostly just a reminder of how truly behind the times Nintendo is in many ways, because even when it's finally catching up—that's all it's doing.

How is now just matching everyone else going to make anyone who doesn't really give a sh*t about Nintendo and its products give any more of a sh*t than they do right now?

There was a time Nintendo was a leader.

I mean, VR is almost certainly the next big thing in gaming and entertainment, potentially the most exciting and biggest paradigm shift since gaming went from 2D to 3D (both visuals and controls), and Nintendo isn't even trying to be part of that movement

What is Nintendo doing?

Alright! Glad to finally get some more info! Though what really caught my attention was the part about movie theaters...hm...interesting...

Mentioning theme parks and theatres probably isn't going to be what I would like it to be—as is the case with most stuff Nintendo does these days.

Personally, I would actually like to see Nintendo open up proper Nintendo theme parks, just like Disney World/Land but Nintendo, but it will probably just have minor Nintendo themed areas in other companies parks.

With the movie stuff I'd actually like to see it release proper high budget anime and maybe some well done live action movies for most of its biggest franchises, but it will probably just release another Pokemon film and possibly some low budget tie-in crap that just disappoints everyone again.

Yeah, I'm not optimistic Nintendo's going to do this right—but can you really blame me with the way Nintendo has been in the last couple of generations?

PS. Along with the parks and movies, I really think Nintendo should be opening up many more Nintendo World/Land stores around the world too. Very much like the Disney stores but just full of Nintendo consoles and merchandise.

Nintendo really needs to realise the full potential of its brand and all its franchises, and, for me, it hasn't even come close to doing that in a long time.

I'm not sure I want be be incentivised to play games by any other incentive than, 'I want to play games'. But there doesn't seem much to go on for the moment, so I'll reserve judgement.

@Fandabidozi A million times this.

@JamesCoote Yeah, that's what I wanted to know, what happens now with our 3DS and Wii U purchases. Are they still attached to those machines separately? Will they appear in our future accounts to reflect the fact that we have already paid for those games? Will Nintendo charged us for the same games once again? Will be able to re download those games on NX? That's the only thing I would care for. I don't care about Facebook being linked to Nintendo.

Sounds interesting at the moment will have to wait for more info about it to be released

Yay! So I can use my both of my Nintendo Network ID (one Brazilian and one canadian) and my Facebook account (which all uses the same email) or it's one or another?

Lol, so much for releasing at the end of the year. Nintendo blows another promise out the window. We literally can't believe them on anything these days.

At least this seems to be worth the wait, as opposed to Miitomo... As many others have already reiterated. I am very curious if Nintendo will reward current Wii U and 3DS users, or if they're just get a heartfelt 'thank you.'

It's still a little vague but so far it's sounding pretty good.

That's some information but not a lot of detailed info. Vague still.

Well, my Wii U is with my brother, who doesn't really use it. The Wii U in my apartment is my friend's, and that's what I mostly play/purchase for. I guess "My" Nintendo will just collect dust. Probably gonna be really missing Club Nintendo.

Wow finally Nintendo is getting out of it's isolated box in the corner and integrating with the world. Looking forward to this! And playing games to earn more great games? Count me in!

@Kirk Even with all this great news people still complain. First they complain about Nintendo not offering the same features as other companies. Now that Nintendo has announced everything we've wanted them to have, people are complaining that they should have more features than the other companies.

Yes, it should have been something that they had a long time ago. Am I complaining? No, because now we actually have will have it. They've been doing more now in the past few years than they have throughout the whole Wii cycle and early Wii U cycle. They fell behind in the past decade and now they need to catch up.

Account system sounds promising at least!

@JamesCoote Digital purchases have been tied to the NNID for a while now, not the hardware. It was the NNID that was hardware tied and acted as your "account".

Now with Nintendo Account, it will no longer be hardware tied. Nintendo Account should be absorbing NNID, which will now just be that - an ID.

I imagine that there will be a limit on the number of 3DS, Wii U, or NX systems that the account can be activated on.

How will they tie in physical purchases? I can only think of codes as the mechanism.

The account system I'm waiting for is the one that replaces NNID and is patched in to 3DS so it will share the friend list from my Wii U. I did hear that this new one can store save data on a server though, so if it means online save backups I'll be okay with it.

@rjejr beat me to it!!! Date...pretty please with sugar on top

Reading this again....no. Still a step or two away from unified accounts. Come on Nintendo you're almost there. Don't try to jump off a cliff in hopes that your fish fins will let you fly.

@AVahne How is this not exactly unified account?

My wonder is will this program accept the ID that I created for my 3DS?

So Excited!

I personally think that for the sake of each country getting fairly good physical rewards , I personally think that all Nintendo governments (NOA NOE NOJ ETC) should come together to make ONE and put the rewards on ONE website therefore everyone gets the rewards they like from different Nintendo governments rather than just make one website for each individual country like what club Nintendo did . Now the chances of this happening is very slim but it would be awesome to see.

So far so good. It's looking promising so far. The biggest thing I'd like to see is a optional achievements system, with an option to hide achievements for those that don't want them.

@MrGuinea They've not even come close to announcing everything I wanted to have. They've just given me the stuff I absolutely expect by default at this point. They're not even close to giving me anything I actually want, or they've not said anything like that yet, and if this ends up being all the really give us by the time NX comes out then they've have fallen woefully short of what I really want with another new system.

@Kirk That's exactly what I was saying.You want more than what is even standard, which is pretty much everybody in general. As a Nintendo fan I've always wanted to just be caught up to everyone so I CAN want more than what is standard. Nintendo obviously can't jump from the first gameboy to a 3DS in one cycle. Heck, I'm just happy Nintendo is actually doing something like this because I thought it would be at least 5 more years down the road before we heard anything like this.

What I'm waiting to hear with unified accounts is the ability to redownload a game you've purchased and possibly back up the save file to Nintendo's server. (Example: Let's say I lose my 3DS and have to buy a new one. I now have to re-buy any games I previously downloaded and start new save files). Maybe that's asking for too much, but I'm hoping by the time the NX comes out, this unified account business will be even better.

So... There's any hope that Nintendo finally includes Latin America in their services? LA have a big community loyal to Nintendo, but they just keep ignoring us. The access to the eShop (and the old Club Nintendo system) from any country on LA it's embarrassing (no demos, no rewards, no chance to buy games, just the option to update games we already owned). I hope they pay more attention to Latin America, a big market full of amazing and loyal videogamers.

@MrGuinea That's what everyone wants with a new console that comes after everything that is already standard in the current generation.

The NX is not Nintendo's current generation console, that is the Wii U. The NX is basically Nintendo's next-gen console, or a least its "mid-gen" console, and so, rightly, I expect basically everything it standard right now PLUS stuff that goes beyond that. Otherwise why the hell would I even bother with an NX when the other consoles already do everything the NX does PLUS they have established user bases, full third party support, a decent library of games already, and will likely be cheaper than the NX when it comes out too? Plus we already know the PS4 and Xbox One are even getting exciting new tech and future proof stuff like PlayStation VR and Hololens support too.

Nintendo needs to give me pretty much everything I can already get on the likes of a PS4 PLUS a little bit more, or else it's basically setting itself up for failure right out the gate, imo, just like was the case with Wii U, which gave us most of the stuff we expected from Xbox 360 and PS3 but just when it was all too little too late.

@Kirk I actually had a mini-seizure the only time I tried VR and I don't have epilepsy nor am I predisposed to seizures so as far as I'm concerned VR is a very dangerous technology in its current form.

@Neko_Ichigofan I'm thinking something went very wrong there.

What VR headset were you using? What generation of the hardware? What game/experience was it?

These are probably factors.

@Captain_Gonru I was holding out hope and watching intently down 4-1, but after the 7th run scored I finally got on to find out what the new app game was. Miitomo. I think I actually saw a tv commercial for it during the game. - Call your Dr. and ask for a prescription if you think you have any of these symptoms, you may be suffering from Miitomo. Or maybe it was a lawsuit commercial for Jacoby and Meyers?

@WanderingPB Date?

I have to give @Spoony_Tech credit for inspiring the new Nintendo marketing slogan. Though he's going to give me grief for the double post:

Nintendo - What are we waiting for?

This is very interesting. Can't wait.

All I really want from the Nintendo Account is to be able to tie my purchases to it, so I can access them on any system I want. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Miitomo seems like a nifty idea, though, and the real life implementation of the Nintendo Account will actually encourage me to try out different places - maybe revisit theme parks I haven't been to in years.

I would really like a better notification system for Wii U. While you're playing it should have a pop-up with, "_____ is now online" instead of home-button lighting up, same for messages and any Voice Chat stuff. It would also be nice if you could see ALL your notifications on all platforms.

Good to see the Nintendo account system will eventually evolve, although we'll have to wait until next March. Still, I hope users will finally have the rights to the games they own instead of yet another "lose your console, lose your games" scenario.

our 3DS count the hours you devote to each game and I guess this is how this will get the info, hopefully our gaming efforts until now will be scanned and imported to our new accounts.

Instead of having time restricted stuff(pokemon events, etc...), make them worth points to get!