The My Nintendo rewards service has been running for a while now and to be honest it hasn’t bowled over fans. IGN caught up with Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime to discuss the service specifically asking whether we would ever get physical rewards. Here’s his response:
“From the Nintendo of America standpoint, we have it as a priority to make My Nintendo much more meaningful moving forward,” he said. When asked if physical rewards might ever come to the program, Fils-Aime said “it could” before discussing a few of the challenges that come with doing something like that in the Americas.
“The challenge I would just share is, unlike Japan, which is a very concentrated market, I’ve got to create solutions that are going to work for Canada, that are going to work for Latin America,” he explained, noting that because it’s a “much more diverse marketplace… physical goods gets a little more challenging.” That isn’t to say Nintendo is ruling it out, though. “Could I envision unique physical goods as part of the program? Sure. But it really needs to work for all of our consumers, not just the consumers in the United States.”
Cop out Reggie strikes again.
That’s one of our leaders.
Leader might be a tad too generous for Reggie. Coperate Face fits his position better.
So many words, so little meaningful information.
P3. 10 points to whoever can explain his answer in a way that makes sense and answers the question.
He’s trying to say that, they could consider it, but they would have to do it for every country if they do it for America. And from what it sounds like, he’s saying it’s harder to do physical items in the USA as a oppose to Japan. If they do a system, it has to work for all the regions, and he doesn’t see it happening. Also, his first paragraph was a lot of fluff and saying the same thing, so that might also mean they have no real thought on doing with Nintendo as a whole.
Doing this with Nintendo as a whole.
Well I got that, but why are physical items such an issue in North America? Is there a problem with distribution or manufacturing?
Honestly, it cost more money to make all that shit and people might not want the physical stuff for that month. But to be even more honest, I think they really don’t want to because it makes more sense to continue to pitch off digital sales of games then waste money on physical items
RidleySlayer Basically Nintendo isn’t going to chuck a North America favouritism act here. If they can’t create and ship physical objects for a program that not every Nintendo user will even use worldwide then they wont do it for just America.
Ok this comment is really to all the answers I got. I must be missing something here. Some people are saying this is about not showing favouritism to the US, but that doesn’t answer my question. Reggie seemed to suggest that implementing physical rewards would be difficult for North America because there are multiple countries they’d have to cater to. My question is: Why would that be a problem? Is there an issue with distribution of physical rewards? Is there an issue with manufacturing the rewards? What exactly is the barrier here?
“No.” We are not spending money on a loyalty program. We just want it to look like we have a loyalty program.””
Lol
Still, I want to be clear, I think Nintendo has changed course in a positive way,… overall. I give them credit for ditching the fucking Wii brand. We can’t expect them to change back to Old Nintendo overnight.
But they better not take 10 years either. I think a lot of Nintendo fans are strained. No more fucking around Nintendo.
https://youtu.be/5mdy8bFiyzY
||His lordship says that the US territory is not the center of the universe, this solar system, planet, continent or Nintendo…||
What? How dare he? Of course the US is the center of the universe.
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/600/1*XwyDzk5XkJl__HaxzSWx3g.png
Glad to see that they acknowledged South America, but people won’t agree whith because reasons.
Short answer:
Its too much work for us, so lets use S.America and Canada as an excuse.
Up untill a few years ago they gave little shits about south America but now its somehow in play? Gtfoh Reggie, you and your bullshit answers.
I know, right!? D:<
Here’s your barrier: shipping
Shipping within the US is cheap. Shipping to Canada/Mexico/Central America would be more expensive.
How to price an item appropriately so that it would cover shipping. It could mean something like a Mario pen could be like 120 Gold points – well games in general cost more in Canada – so they may reward more points – or less for all I know. So the issue becomes the currency and location to properly calculate everything. While Club Nintendo did have availability of physical items, it was also by region. So some fans were not able to access Club Nintendo at all. My Nintendo is aimed at all consumers, thus making it harder to add a physical element to it.
Thank you. I had considered shipping costs being a problem, but I’m not really familiar with the locations of any and all Nintendo warehouses and/or manufacturing centers around North America; so I didn’t know how much of a problem that might really be.
At this point I’d just settle for digital games instead of just discounts for digital games.
As it stands now, My Nintendo Rewards is actually worse than the low point of Club Nintendo.
I miss cheating on Club Nintendo. I registered SO many games that I don’t even own. LOL!
Also, the expiration dates for coins are bullshit.
How about scrap the whole crap idea and start over.
I’ll never forget how much better the physical rewards were for the Europe and Japan Club Nintendo. Oh how I envied those CD soundtracks and Mario Kart trophies.
If they actually gave you TRULY great digital rewards… but they don’t.
I can’t begin to list the games I have got for free on XBLive. Free or dirt cheap. And that’s not including holiday sales, REAL sales.
Nintendo is quite comfortable with their anti-consumer business model. And thanks to Zelda, They will continue this way for another 5 years minimum.
“I can’t begin to list the games I got for free by paying every month.”
When will sheeple stop being fooled so easily and realize that NOTHING you get by joining a paid subscription is free?
Of course it’s not truly “Free-Free.” But for $60 a year, $5 a month, I get fast, stable online gaming, Voice chat, and if you don’t like the word “Free”, My $5 a month gives me games like Titanfall 2 for the low price of $0.00, and I just picked up Need For Speed for $0.00 (included in my $5 a month service charge).
Sure there were some B-titles as well, but I have been getting real, AAA games at no extra charge, or crazy low prices. Not Microsoft games, All publishers. I’m not even sure how Microsoft makes those deals. Publishers must get a cut of the annual $60.
Yesterday, I bought Everspace. I wanted Elite Dangerous, but messed up and got the wrong one. I called Microsoft and told them I would like to exchange games. They said no problem and let me swap digital titles a week after.
$60 for the level of service, online stability, voice chat and includes a shit ton of games?
I wasnt going to go into detail, but since you wanted to use the word “Sheeple” I figured the gamers in this forum should know what I’m talking about, and if that doesn’t sound like $5 a month well spent, they can make that decision on their own.
Granted, I’m new to all this Xbox live shit. I’m used to years of crappy Nintendo rewards. (after the original Nintendo loyalty program died) – so, I probably get excited easy, I’m sure lots of gamers are like, “Yeah,.. what, you didn’t know this is normal?”
I’ll keep my Xbox chat to a minimum, or at least I’ll try. But I figure everyone can blame you for my rant.
Everyone here is aware how much of a pain it is to add exporting across national lines as part of a program right? You’re all reacting like this is some insane BS. His region includes 3 countries, so if he made physical goods he would be expected to do them for all 3. Getting a system in place that jumps through all the hurdles for this, AND is cost effective (because the entire program is free, so there’s no way they’d let him go over budget) is difficult. The lack of business sense on this board is getting out of hand.
I mean, Jaded_Drybones over here is actually calling Nintendo of all three companies “anti-consumer” while praising MICROSOFT. That’s a special kind of delusional.
People its a very simple choice and it isn’t.
yikes i messed that up
People think*
So Club Nintendo was only in the USA, then. Interesting.
Reggie: we’re replacing the much beloved Club Nintendo (with physical rewards & digital downloads of full games) with something even better. Presenting My Nintendo. With Discounts and themes.
Members: WTF? Where’s our physical rewards and full games? We love those. it’s the only reason we join/earn.
Reggie: I hear you, and am pleased to announce even more discounts. And Themes for Gold Coins!
Members: WTF!
Reggie; sure, I’d liek to give physical rewards, but hey, it’s too hard to make it work for every country. So why bother. But I hear there’s some really great discounts on games nobody wants coming next month.
Like DemiGOD said, this is just a nice little bullshit excuse. They couldn’t have given two shits about Latin America & Canada in the past but suddenly they care when it suits them as a bullshit cop out excuse to not even try & put effort into it because it might be too hard. While I’m happy with my Switch & the games coming, everything else about Nintendo is still as shitty as ever it would seem.
Hey King, remember when the Europen Club Nintendo had trouble exporting goods to 5 different countries so they didnt do it?
Oh thats right, they didnt. They manage to give away physical rewards to 5 different countries. Yet Reggie is over here giving us bullshit about Canada and South America.
Ive been saying this for years, Reggie has got to go.
I’m sure he’s not a bad guy. He’s just a bad NINTENDO guy.
Ive been hearing this man spewing bs for years, im seriously tired of his robotic corporate dodgy answers. I cant wait till he gets fired.
I don’t think he will. Someone at Nintendo probably likes him because it’s possible he kisses ass. Nothing more useless than a CEO that is a Yes Man to his superiors instead of a Yes Man to his customers. It’s one thing to have respect but it’s another thing entirely to stand by & watch your boss treat the customers like trash. And vice versa if the boss is a nice guy with the manager/CEO being the bad apple. When BOTH are bad, well it’s only a matter of time before the business eventually suffers.
They’re trying to expand to South America. If they alienate on a service, that’s not the way to go.
And people comparing NOE, it’s different agreements of which there’s less control in the Americas due to corruption.