Switch games can soon be bought with My Nintendo coins

Nintendo is giving Switch owners a new way to spend their My Nintendo coins, the company announced on the service’s website. Starting in March, My Nintendo members will be able to put their gold points toward buying actual Switch games, a huge step up from the current rewards on offer.

Members currently receive gold points by purchasing Nintendo games either from eShop and brick-and-mortar retailers. Those can be exchanged for fixed discounts, like coupons toward a selection of games. But they’ll soon have an actual cash equivalent, which means that My Nintendo power-users may be able to use their hefty stock of points to buy new games from the eShop at no added cost.

Nintendo explained how this will work as part of the post:

Buy a qualifying digital game for Nintendo Switch, Wii U, or Nintendo 3DS family systems or a physical game for the Nintendo Switch system.

Earn Gold Points worth 5% of the amount you pay, not including any points or discounts used. (Buying a physical game for the Nintendo Switch system will earn you Gold Points worth 1% of the Nintendo eShop purchase price for that game.)

You can then redeem those points on your next eligible digital purchase (including games and DLC) for the Nintendo Switch system from Nintendo eShop or Nintendo.com.

To give you an example: If you spend $50 on an eShop game, you’ll receive 250 gold points in return. Those points are equivalent to $2.50; should you cash in on them, you’d get a cool $2.50 off your next eShop purchase. (Nintendo is clearly incentivizing the digital side of things by offering just one percent of your money back on physical games, which makes sense, considering retail relationships and all that.)

It’ll take a long, long time to amass the amount of coins necessary to buy a full game on eShop without pitching in some of your own cash. Still, this is a great start, considering how pithy My Nintendo’s other rewards tend to be.