New WiiWare recruitment drive soon

By Robert Purchese Published 16 September, 2009

Ambassador rewards are big, pointy.

Nintendo plans to unleash a WiiWare recruitment initiative this October called the Connection Ambassador Promotion.

The message is simple: help a new customer connect their console to WiiWare and receive 500 Wii Points (around £3.50 / €5). Turn that into 10 recruits and become Connection Master Gold, a title that unlocks all first-party (Nintendo) NES games on Virtual Console for free.

Reach the maximum 20 recruits, however, and that Gold title turns to Platinum, and yours for free are any NES, SNES and N64 games by Nintendo. You'll also have amassed 10,000 Wii Points (around £70 / €100).

The platform holder unveiled the initiative today at a media event in heart of London, which we sent Oli Welsh along to cover. His choice of hat is as yet unknown.

Also spilling from the event is word that Wallace and Gromit creator Aardman Studios has used DSiWare's Flipnote Studio to make 12 mini-animations, which will be published - one a week - during the run up to Christmas. And they will be free to download.

Nintendo launched the WiiWare web portal today, too - where all news and game data is compiled. This adds a sorely needed marketing spotlight for WiiWare to be put in.

There are weekly and all-time sales charts there as well. The former is topped by Contra Rebirth and the latter dominated by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • wizlon #1 2 years ago

    pork pie, that is his choice of hat for this particular event, or so I have been informed.

  • Deleo-FR #2 2 years ago

    what wiiware needs most is probably trial mode ...

  • Evolution #3 2 years ago

    I'm going to say a fedora.

  • Kelduum #4 2 years ago

    @wizlon
    I have it on good authority that it was actually a fedora which had been sat on.

  • Kerome #5 2 years ago

    Lame... the whole rewards-for-creating-networks thing has never worked as anything other than an incidental draw, and this would work better if they just said, if you introduce another person to the service you get X free points. Trying to build a game structure out of it is just a step too far.

  • sneetch #6 2 years ago

    @Kerome

    They do say that, from the article:

    "The message is simple: help a new customer connect their console to WiiWare and receive 500 Wii Points (around £3.50 / €5)."

    So you get the points for recruiting people and in addition to those points you can also get the catalogues for recruiting 10 or 20 people.

  • insincere_dave #7 2 years ago

    kerome...

    "The message is simple: help a new customer connect their console to WiiWare and receive 500 Wii Points (around £3.50 / €5)."

    Obviously you are more simple than this message.

  • Toothball #8 2 years ago

    This isn't such a bad thing, but I'd much rather have some way to recover all the content I lost when my Wii was stolen the other month. It's put me off buying anything else on the service.

  • CallousB #9 2 years ago

    If Nintendo wants to boost Wiiware and get people online...they should just give a wiiware/virtual console game away for free.

    You include a code for a free download of a classic game with a big new release/with the hardware ..and you'd get a flood or new users. If the casuals know they will get a free game then they will make the effort to connect.

    I'd suggest including a download code for the original Super Mario Bros with every copy of New Super Mario Bros Wii.

  • Oli Verified Reviews Editor, Eurogamer.net #10 2 years ago

    Bad luck everybody. I left the fedora and pork pie at home and went with my grey 8-piece cap.

  • sneetch #11 2 years ago

    Great idea CallousB!

  • Roland_on_the_Ropes #12 2 years ago

    From the title of the article I thought the recruitment drive was going to aimed at getting new games onto WiiWare! About time some did I think. Like ISS 98! Magnificent 40 yard screamers which curl at impossible angles right into the top corner

  • Dan234 #13 2 years ago

    @Toothball:

    This isn't such a bad thing, but I'd much rather have some way to recover all the content I lost when my Wii was stolen the other month. It's put me off buying anything else on the service.

    Can't you fax a copy of the crime number/insurance stuff off to Nintendo UK?

    If a Wii is beyond repair they can copy your shop account over to the new replacement console's account, I doubt the process is any different for a stolen console.
    Edited by 1 at 17/09/09 @ 09:04

  • smelly #14 2 years ago

    @Toothball : Cant speak for the uk. But over a friend had her stuff stolen.. she contacted nintendo with her username and stuff and they took all her online sales and ported them to the new system.. No problems at all, they even sent her a free hat (which was prompty sold to some geek on ebay)

  • magicdan2009 #15 2 years ago

    I’m still happy to help people get their Wii online so you get 500 free points (enough for one retro game e.g. Pacman, original Super Mario Bros and many more to choose from!) Even if you don’t need the help, you can still get the points by adding my Wii number which is:

    8204 5356 8089 6841

    (Add after clicking Wii Shop Channel, then Connection Ambassador, then ‘Person Who Was Helped’) Then email me YOUR Wii number to aniel.wood3@gmail.com">daniel.wood3@gmail.com, I’ll enter it on my Wii then we’ll both get the free points!

    Please note, you have to have put your Wii online for the first time in the last 30 days - any later than that and it won’t work!