reader comments
26 with 20 posters participating
A quick PSA for anyone with a Nintendo Switch and an Amazon Prime account: a deal that gives a free year of Nintendo Switch Online to those who subscribe to Amazon’s Twitch Prime service is set to expire tomorrow, September 24.
For the uninitiated, Nintendo Switch Online is a subscription service that normally costs $20 a year and is required to play online multiplayer in most Switch games. (Free-to-play titles like Fortnite are exempt, but it’s needed for games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or the upcoming Overwatch port.) We noted this Amazon deal when it arrived in March, but with Nintendo adding a slate of classic Super Nintendo games to the service (albeit at the expense of monthly releases), it remains a good bargain if you already have a Prime membership.
Redeeming the offer isn’t entirely straightforward, so as a reminder, here’s what you have to do to get the full year. Again, all of this presumes you pay for Prime to begin with:
- If you haven’t already, go to this landing page and link your Prime and Twitch accounts together. (And create a Twitch account, if necessary.) This gets you Twitch Prime, which is a free add-on for normal Prime.
- Scroll down that page and click on the Nintendo Switch Online banner (or go here), then claim the “Get 3 months of Nintendo Switch Online” offer. This will have you connect your Twitch and Nintendo accounts.
- On Nintendo’s website, enter your billing information, register a credit card or link a PayPal account, and redeem the offer as prompted. You’ll be signed up for automatic payment renewal—the “$7.99 for 3 months” charge on Nintendo’s redemption page only refers to how much the service will cost once the gifted months expire—but feel free to cancel that once you have the full 12 months locked in. You’ll just have to do so at least 48 hours before your membership expires in order to avoid being charged. Also note that you’ll need to have linked your Nintendo account to a Switch system beforehand in order to redeem the deal.
- Once 60 days have passed—so, late November—return to the Twitch Prime offer page, claim the deal that reads “Get 9 more months of Nintendo Switch Online,” and redeem it on Nintendo’s site just like before. You can check the “Purchase History” or “Nintendo Switch Online” sections of your Nintendo account page to ensure the months were added correctly.
You don’t have to claim the last nine months exactly 60 days later, but the cutoff date to get them is January 22. September 24 is just the last day for anyone to redeem the initial 3-month deal, which makes the 9-month offer available.
The offer is available to both new and existing Switch Online members. If you already subscribe to the service, you can stack the 12 months here on top of your current membership, but only up to a maximum time balance of 36 months. Amazon clearly wants to coax more Switch owners into buying Prime, hence it requiring users to keep Twitch Prime for 60 days before making the last nine months available, but your Switch Online membership won’t expire if you cancel Prime after claiming the final nine months. Unfortunately, though, the deal only applies to individual Switch Online memberships, not the family plans that typically go for $35 a year. Still, if you have Prime and Switch Online to begin with, this shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to save $20.
Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.
