It’s often forgotten because of just how meagre it is but the Nintendo eShop has a loyalty programme in the form of Gold Points, and these will be doubled throughout February.
As a reminder Gold Points are earned on most purchases made on the eShop at a conversion rate of five percent. In South Africa a single point is worth R0.10. That’s right, just ten cents.
“Here’s a golden opportunity you won’t want to miss! For a limited time, you can earn DOUBLE My Nintendo Gold Points on select digital games. That means you can earn 10% in Gold Points—which you can then use toward your next eligible digital game or DLC,” reads an announcement.
The select games can be found from this page.
Let’s do some quick maths to illustrate this.
Let’s say a game costs R1 000, which is actually less than most Nintendo Switch games but let’s work with it for now.
- Usually R1 000 = 50 Gold Coins = R5 off of your next purchase.
- For February R1 000 = 100 Gold Coins = R10 off of your purchase
When you look at the numbers like that you realise that even with DOUBLE points as Nintendo puts it, the Gold Points system is still hilariously miniscule and you would need to buy an absurd amount of games and other software on the eShop before any real discount can be built up towards a purchase.
Finally we have to point out a problem on the official Nintendo website for Gold Points which you can view here.
We’ve taken a screenshot of the problem area which you can see below. The math here is completely broken and is working on a Gold Points return of 50 percent instead of the usual five.
We encountered a similar problem with the local Nintendo website back in March 2021 when there was a Gold Points promotion for subscribing to Nintendo Switch Online.
We’ve let representatives for Nintendo know about this error but we have to laugh. R25 back on a R500 purchase would actually be a nice return. Hell imagine R50 back on a R500 purchase with this February promotion. Oh well.
