Last year, I commented on how useless the then-recent My Nintendo Rewards scheme was. I said back then:
Quickly, I racked up enough of these new coins to buy the Zelda Picross game from the My Nintendo Rewards page, which was pretty good, and I looked forward to obtaining more free games like this.
But they never came. And they haven’t since. In fact, the situation has become even worse.
Since last year, the Nintendo Switch has come out. If you tie your Switch account to your My Nintendo account, you can accumulate Gold Coins with every Switch game purchase – even physical titles. You also now have more ways to “earn” Platinum Coins, if you play mobile titles like Mario Run or Fire Emblem Heroes (which I don’t, incidentally).
Sadly, there’s still nothing to buy with any of these coins. Some money off games that 1) I already have, and 2) are often still cheaper elsewhere. Today, I received an email from Nintendo telling me there were some new “Just For You” deals, presumably just for me. How kind! Looking at the offerings, I see I can get The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons for my 3DS at a discount. That would be great, only I already bought it on the eShop years ago on the very account already tied to my My Nintendo account. Not only that, but it was cheaper then than it is now even with the discount. In addition, I bloody completed it again just three days ago.
Furthermore, over the months, my “coins” – which I can’t spend, remember – have been expiring. I’ve lost over 6000 Platinum points so far. Sure, I could have spent them getting a copy of Picross e3 or e4 slightly cheaper but guess what? I already have them. Come the end of the month, another 500 Platinum Coins disappear, unspent, and in October my Gold coins start expiring too.
It’s a rubbish system, Nintendo. Why can’t you just give us some NES games for a few hundred coins? Or a generic “10% off the eShop” voucher? There’s no point offering me money off stuff I already have and literally can’t buy again even if I wanted to as you can only have one copy per account! Sort it out.