Since the December of 2007, fans were able to show their loyalty to Nintendo by being a part of Club Nintendo. Not an actual club per se, but a loyalty program where players could save up and purchase a variety of titles from different platforms. Saving enough coins – the program’s currency – by answering surveys and buying cards would allow fans to purchase titles from previous Nintendo consoles, like the Gamecube and the Gameboy Advance and be played on the Wii and Wii U.

However, Nintendo has made an official announcement: Club Nintendo shuts down this year. The loyalty program will no longer receive any new content and will officially be discontinued and terminated on Sept. 30, 2015 for Europe, New Zealand and Australia. The phase out process has already started in North America, with the club closing on June 30 and all the coins and products getting deleted on July 1.

In the mean time, IGN has stated that dozens of games will be added to the Club Nintendo catalog before it’s official termination. Though what those games are have not been confirmed. Long time members of the Club Nintendo will also be getting a free downloadable code for “Flipnote Studio 3D” on February 2015.

There’s also the possibility of reaching “Elite” status. If a player manages to earn 300 to 600 coins, by March 31, players will reach the “Elite” status and will be able to choose a free game from a wide selection of 3DS and Wii U titles. Once again, it’s unsure what the titles actually are, but Nintendo will probably announce that soon enough.

A new loyalty program is reportedly being worked on to replace Club Nintendo according to Kotaku. No details have been released about it, nor any project names. All that’s known so far is that Nintendo is hard at work making it a good system and will hopefully be better than Club Nintendo. One possibly disappointing aspect is the inability to transfer accounts. Fans will not be able to transfer their purchases from Club Nintendo to the new loyalty system. So sadly fans won’t be able to replay their favourite purchases from Club Nintendo.

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