Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto recently discussed some of the present and future plans for Nintendo with the Associated Press; including Wii U software, development of new hardware, and the company’s all-new line of interactive figures – Amiibo.
As you may already know, the Amiibo toys have been in such high demand that some of them are nearly impossible to find, even selling for several times the standard MSRP on sites like Amazon and eBay. Specifically, the Villager, Marth and Wii Fit Trainer Amiibos have been difficult to find, and even the newer wave of Amiibos released in December are quickly disappearing.
Rumors about certain Amiibos being discontinued after their initial run have been mostly confirmed by Nintendo, but Miyamoto comments that an alternative solution might already be in the works – we might see card-based forms of discontinued Amiibos, with access to the same content as the toy version:
We’re not making promises for certain figures, but the way ‘amiibo’ is designed is that certain games can have ‘amiibo’ specifically for that game. Other games can take advantage of past ‘amiibo’ that developers want to make their game compatible with. In the future, we have the option, if certain ‘amiibo’ figures are no longer available in stores, to release an ‘amiibo’ in card form with the same functionality.
I certainly wouldn’t be as excited about purchasing an Amiibo card, but if the price was right – say, half or one-fourth the price of the figures – I could see this as a viable solution.
I sincerely hope that Nintendo responds to the high demand in North America when it ships the third wave of Amiibo figures next February, as I really want to track down a Toon Link – he’s one of my “mains” in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.
I also hope that they knock off the whole retailer-exclusive deal with certain figures like Lucario, Rosalina and Shulk. Why make the process any harder for consumers that might be interested in using them? If these things are targeted toward younger audiences, Nintendo is shooting itself in the foot by making them so difficult to find.
Source – Polygon
