Well this is a surprise! When Nintendo announced its new Nintendo Account system alongside My Nintendo and Miitomo we just assumed it would all be arriving in March next year – but that’s not the case. It’s live now, at least in Japan.

Nintendo’s Japanese site has had a complete responsive redesign and with it has come Nintendo Account.

For now it’s only for the Japanese and any non Japanese Nintendo Network ID’s can’t be linked but they can now signed up for a Nintendo Account with your Japanese NNID, social network account or you can just sign up with an email.

Along with the account you can now buy games from the website and have it automatically download to your console. You can only buy games from the site if you link a NNID, a Facebook or Twitter account won’t cut it.

You can use the desktop or mobile site to sign up for the new account, you don’t need to use your 3DS or Wii U anymore. If you do use your Nintendo Network ID it’ll sync all the details up and you can see your account details, purchase history and even set a nickname.

There’s also an introductory program for Japanese uses who link their NNID to their newly created Nintendo Account. You’ll get 100 Yen back on every 1000 Yen you spend. You can only add 10,000 Yen max to your account and on you’ll only be able to earn 1000 Yen per day. This offer expires next year on February 2nd.

Nintendo has also created a new blog called ‘Topics‘ where it will announce news from in the future.

Hopefully Nintendo won’t take too long to roll this one out to rest of the world.