During a meeting with investors, Nintendo have announced My Nintendo, the successor to their popular Club Nintendo rewards programme, which was withdrawn in September. The new service will allow members to earn points as they play games, as well as when they buy games and DLC.
There was no information on how points would be awarded in game, but it sounds like you will be earning points from doing certain things in game, much like how you earn Trophies or Achievements on Sony and Microsoft’s consoles, but you will be given an extra incentive by earning credit towards another purchase, costumes for your game avatar, official Nintendo merchandise or extra DLC.
Nintendo are emphasising that the service will be easy to setup, with integration with Facebook, Twitter, Google accounts or simply using your existing Nintendo Network ID to get up and running. In the future Nintendo are looking to use the service for cloud saves for your console and mobile games. Nintendo says that the service will launch in March 2016, along with Nintendo’s first smartphone game Miitomo.
I don’t know how I feel about all these reward-systems. Sure, they are made as positive reinforcements in order to keep me playing, but are they necessary? After all, a lot of trophies etc pretty much just is a quantitative indicator that says I have been playing alot of games. If there were a bit more rare and rewarded extraordinary effors, perhaps they would matter more.
After all, I could play Super Mario Bros 1 all day without caring about trophies and rewards…