Nintendo switches to global domain (nintendo.com) for its Japanese and European websites
Update: Nintendo has announced that after Japan a few weeks ago, a similar change is coming to Europe. Starting April 9th, the official websites of Nintendo of Europe will switch to the nintendo.com domain. Here’s the new URLS:
- United Kingdom: Nintendo.com/en-gb/
- France: Nintendo.com/fr-fr/
- Germany: Nintendo.com/de-de/
- Italy: Nintendo.com/it-it/
- Spain: Nintendo.com/es-es/
- Netherlands (Dutch): Nintendo.com/nl-nl/
- Portugal: Nintendo.com/pt-pt/
- Switzerland (German): Nintendo.com/de-ch/
- Switzerland (Italian): Nintendo.com/it-ch/
- Switzerland (French): Nintendo.com/fr-ch/
- Austria: Nintendo.com/de-at/
- Belgium (Dutch): Nintendo.com/nl-be/
- Belgium (French): Nintendo.com/fr-be/
Don’t forget to update your bookmarks when the changes is live, though don’t worry if you forget as the old domains will keep working (you will automatically be re-directed to the new one).
Source: Nintendo (Twitter)
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Nintendo has just announced a small but significant change to its official website in Japan. Starting tomorrow (February 26th), its domain will switch from nintendo.co.jp to nintendo.com/jp (the URL is already active, but leads to a 404 error). No need to update any of your browser’s bookmarks or links: the change will occur automatically, and even if you do visit the old URL, you will automatically be redirected to the new one.
According to Nintendo’s announcement (one single tweet that provides little details), this change was made due to “server environment improvements”.
The company specifies that not all pages will be impacted, though it’s unclear which ones will keep using the old domain (company information, Support, and most likely old ones and/or pages where a domain change would have been too complex too implement).
This change may come as a surprise to most users, but it has been a long time coming. For several years now, the Japanese web eShop has been using the .com domain (store-jp.nintendo.com, to be precise), and for a few months now, the official websites of games (like Another Code: Recollection, for example) have been using the “new” domain, automatically redirecting users to it.
It would appear that after Nintendo is (finally) starting to unify their web presence in some way. Right now, only a few regions are using the nintendo.com domain; namely, countries that are managed by Nintendo of America (United States, Canada, Mexico, etc.), but also some countries from East Asia (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines).
It’s not clear if/when other regions will follow, but it seems likely that ultimately, all regions will end up using the nintendo.com eventually.
Source: Nintendo (Twitter)
