Nintendo’s new cross-platform Nintendo Account system is now open for registration

By Kris Wouk February 17, 2016

nintendo mario — Barone Firenze/Shutterstock

Earlier this month we reported that Nintendo was preparing to launch its new account system, replacing the old, cumbersome Nintendo Network ID. It’s a necessary step, as Nintendo has lagged behind Sony and Nintendo in online services for years.

The new cross-platform user account system, simply known as a Nintendo Account, launched in Japan in December, but is open for registration worldwide. There isn’t too much you can do with the account for the time being, but at least you can try to nab the user name of your choice.

The new account will be how users sign in anywhere, whether from a mobile device or Nintendo 3DS or Wii U. More importantly, users’ purchases are tracked as part of the new account. Until now, digital purchases have been tied to a single console or handheld. The new account system works similarly to PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, allowing users to easily re-download past purchases.

If you already have a Nintendo Network ID, you can use it to sign up for a new Nintendo Account. New users can sign in using Facebook, Google+, or Twitter, or can opt to sign up for a new account from scratch.

Once you’ve signed up for a Nintendo Account, you can also pre-register for Nintendo’s first mobile app, Miitomo. As a reward, you’ll earn Platinum Points, which earn rewards in the My Nintendo program set to launch along with Miitomo next month.

Closer to a social network than an actual game, Miitomo is described by Nintendo as an app that “sparks one-of-a-kind conversations between you and your friends.” The app seems to be both a way for Nintendo to test the mobile waters and a method to get users signed up for Nintendo Accounts before the company launches an actual game for mobile devices.

To get started signing up for a Nintendo Account, head over to the company’s registration page.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

Gaming

Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo

Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years.
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward.
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis."
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision?
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened.

Gaming

We already had the perfect Twitter alternative. It was Nintendo’s Miitomo

A user dresses up their character in Miitomo.

Whether or not you agree with Twitter’s current direction under Elon Musk, it's safe to say that the social media platform is going through a rough patch. Its staff has been gutted, it's been notably buggier in recent weeks, and there’s a general instability in the air that has advertisers concerned. All that, coupled with a string of controversial moves, has some users seriously considering a true Twitter exodus.

That prospect has been threatened plenty of times over the app’s life span, but users are getting serious. Alternatives like Hive and Mastodon are gaining serious traction, but no app is a perfect solution yet. Each comes with its fair share of quirks that makes every one feel like a concession. Hive, for instance, doesn’t have its own browser app and doesn’t work too well on Android devices at the moment. The reality might just be that there’s no real alternative to Twitter yet and users just have to find peace with whichever alternative has the least amount of problems.

Gaming

Animal Crossing: New Horizons bug guide for November 2022

Catching a bug in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game for completionists, giving you tons of things to collect that can take up a lot of your time. In particular, bug catching can eat up lots of your time, especially since so many of them only appear during certain times of the year. Each month, different bugs come and go, even though the overall list might not change much from October to November, for example.

In this guide, we'll go through the new Animal Crossing: New Horizons November 2022 bug list, including tips on when they appear, where to find them, how much they're worth, and more.