Topic: RE: Nintendo of Europe Reward System Overhaul

[NewsBot]

Screw those lame wallpapers and screensavers, Europeans can now use their Stars on shirts and games.

Nintendo introducing a customer rewards system to North America may be new for us, but for Europeans, they've had something in place for quite some time now.  The European Stars Catalogue has been offering meager wallpaper and screen saver downloads exclusively for those who have purchased Nintendo products.

NOE announced today that starting next Monday the 25th, you can trade in your Stars for games, t-shirts and various Nintendo gifts.  The Stars Catalouge is currently offline while Nintendo overhauls the system, so all your Europeans had better go out and buy Nintendo to collect those Stars.

[PIAC]

;___; i want tshirts and stuff!

does japan have a customer loyalty system? if so then australia/nz should have one too, I DEMAND SHIRTS

this is good news for the few euro's that hang out here (plugabugz and JB come to mind)

[nichrome]

I wouldn't say "few". We "euros" might not be posting a lot, but that doesn't make us non-existent.

And no, Japan doesn't have this sort of system quite yet. The system is scheduled to launch in Japan around the same time it's launched in the US.

To comment on the newspost a bit, NOE have offered stuff like WaveBirds and other accessories in their Stars Catalogue, too, in addition to those PC/Mac screensavers and wallpapers and other minor thingies.

[fbinternational]

I am glad I didn`t spend my stars (thats the "bonus money" used in this system) on stupid wallpapers.
I hope my 4300+ stars get me a decent game. I have spent a lot of my money on the cube and gba.

On a side note: The star system only applies for Nintendos own products not for third party developed ones

Cu FBInternational

[BMH]

I got 5000+ stars to spend. Thats enough for lets say A Wavebird, or a Gameboy Player or a game.

Also nice to know is that if you register a Nintendo game at the nintendo website, you get free godies including a walkthrough with images and stuff  

[PIAC]

i didn't mean anything derogatory by calling you euros, its just what i call you, i get called an aussie, americans get called yankees, the brittish get called poms, its just the way of things, and if you dont post much, how am i to know you exist

so japan doens't have this then? curses.. well i still want it in australia :\

[Jsan]

I hate it when they talk about Europe, but the Star system isn't in place in most European countries. I've got two memory cards, 6 Nintendo published games, a Gamecube (obviously) and two controllers.. how many of those "VIP 24:7 codes" for stars do I have? Two. One came with Luigi's Mansion and the other with the Gamecube. After that they stopped putting them in releases in Finland (and most of the rest of Europe), because there was nothing you could do with them here. You can't even register to be a "VIP member" if you're Finnish (well, you can if you register as a brit, but you still won't get the stars).

[JB]

You can only get the stars if you live in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Germany, France or Spain. All the other European countries still get left out.  If you really want the stars, JSan, I recommend that you order your games from amazon.co.uk. The games from there should have the stars in them.

Now if Nintendo of Europe could only announce that Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes will be released here in November........

[joshnickerson]

One question though... do the points apply to games you've already bought, or only games you buy after the date the point system begins? If the latter, I may hold off on buying any games so I can get points for them.

[JB]

In Europe there are scratch cards wich are sealed in with all games distributed by Nintendo of Europe. This means that you can only get points with Nintendo's first and second party games and most likely also on a few third-party games Soul Calibur II (Nintendo is distributing this game in Europe, but Namco is handling the American release themselves). On these scratchcards there is a unique code wich you have to enter on Nintendo's website. Once you have done this you get the points. So I guess you will only get the points with games you buy in the future. Also you might only get the points with new games, and not with games that have already been released. This happened in Europe when the decision was made to also give away the points with GBA games(all GBA games released before Metroid Fusion still don't contain the points).

[YenRug]

One slight mistake in the news story, the Stars Catalogue is being taken down on the 25th of August and will then slowly be brought back online after that, it isn't going to be ready for the 25th!

*Wonders what to do with 7000 Stars*

[hockeyoilers99]

I just hope this comes to Canada, it would be nice to earn some free games.

[JB]

Quote
Originally posted by: YenRug
One slight mistake in the news story, the Stars Catalogue is being taken down on the 25th of August and will then slowly be brought back online after that, it isn't going to be ready for the 25th!

*Wonders what to do with 7000 Stars*

That might be my fault, I was surfing the Nintendo site when they posted this and I immediatly reported it to PGC. Because I was reading the Dutch version of the site, which says that the site will go down on Monday and will be back up again on the 25th of August, I gave the wrong dates when I reported it.

I'm expecting the Game Boy Player(I didn't buy one because it was going to be added to the stars catalogue) and GameCube games to cost aroung 4000-5000 stars. I've got 6650 stars at the moment and expect to have at least 8320 at the end of the year, so that's probably going to mean a free game and Game Boy Player.

[ruby_onix]

Why does everyone seem to think that North America has never had a "rewards" system like Europe does.

Nintendo Power has been giving out $1 stamps for something like two decades now. You can use them on t-shirts and games, and Yoshi plushies and CDs and Zelda pens and all sorts of other crazy Nintendo stuff.

It's probably just because the European system is online and you have to register them, and stuff like that, while Nintendo Power and it's stamps are a physical thing.

Just because the virtual magazines can get information to you weeks before the real-life ones can, it doesn't mean Al Gore and the virual world invented stuff decades before reality caught on!


Ahhh, you people are all just computer programs designed to trick me anyways...

[fbinternational]

What happens if you trade your stars for a nintendo game ?
Will there be a card in that game that gives you 250 new stars or will this be left out?
Has anybody heard about that?