Nintendo Stars Catalogue

The Nintendo Stars Catalogue is a catalogue of the items which were available through Nintendo of Europe's and Nintendo of Japan's customer loyalty scheme. The name is also commonly used to refer to the loyalty scheme itself.

Items from the catalogue can be purchased in exchange for "stars", which are points awarded for the purchase of first-party hardware and titles. Stars are also awarded for the purchase of certain third-party titles. Other methods of obtaining stars include participating in surveys, inviting others to become a member and even simply visiting a web site.

History
Initially, stars could only be used to purchase digital content such as backgrounds, stationary templates and music. Limited quantities of physical items were periodically added, such as clothes, games and consoles (though Nintendo of Europe sometimes required purchases of consoles to be subsidized with currency).

Nintendo of Europe's web site is notorious for becoming easily overwhelmed by traffic when quantities of the more valuable items are added, which often causes difficulty for customers who are attempting to make purchases. In recent years, the frequency of larger batches of non-digital goods became quite rare. The British catalogue, for example, had not been properly updated from June 2006 to late 2007. On December 6, 2007, Nintendo of Europe unveiled a new revamped site with new memorabilia in the catalogue and gave Club Nintendo users the opportunity to exchange their Star Points for Wii Points for use on the Wii Shop Channel to download Virtual Console titles, as well as releasing new physical goods such as Mario Kart and Wii Fit-related merchandise.

From July 15, 2007, all new and current NOE members were asked to sign a new agreement regarding their earned Star Points. If members did not want to accept the new terms and conditions members were told that that Nintendo "will be forced to deactivate your Nintendo membership". The new agreement included a clause that stated all Stars earned will automatically expire 24 months after they were added and that all Stars earned before the new agreement will expire on June 1, 2008. Along with the new members agreement, Nintendo also stated that all members who have linked their Wii Shop Channel account to their online Nintendo membership would soon be able to swap their Star Points for Wii Points.

Wii Points card shop
On December 8, 2006, Nintendo Europe confirmed that Star Points, can be converted to Wii Points. The rate of exchange is 4 Star Points for each Wii Point, although on March 23, 2007, a "test item" for 1000 Wii Points in the catalogue that could initially only be seen by Nintendo Europe editors accidentally went live. The item was offered for 789 Stars, but in an email sent on March 29, 2007 to those who bought one of the 1500 on offer, "the price of 789 stars used during the testing period was entirely random." The email offered the option either to reimburse the 789 Stars which were spent or for the user to be given the 1,000 Wii Points they had bought.

On December 7, 2007, Wii owners were able to swap their star points in a ratio of four star points for one Wii point. Wii Points were available only in sets of 100, 300, 500 and 1000 points. A maximum of two Wii Points Cards per day per account was available for purchase. This changed to one a day on the December 13th, 2007.

Criticism
Upon the launch of the Wii Points Cards website, the website was swamped with traffic, meaning very few people could login and take advantage of the Wii Points trade on offer. The system has also been criticized because the Wii Points Card codes were only available in limited stock.

There was also a mistake at the Nintendo website, telling users that some of their stars would expire in the New Year. Users were unhappy with this news as they were unable to login and use their Star Points to purchase Wii Points before they expired. This mistake was later corrected and the stars were set to expire on June 30, 2008.