Analysts Weigh in on Nintendo's Successes and Failures with amiibo

I've said it a hundred times, they need a proper Amiibo game. In my opinion these things still add nothing to gameplay and lack a compelling reason to buy them other than being a nice collectible thing.

If they make Amiibo do too much, people will complain.

My thoughts in a nutshell.. "Where's my Nintendo skylanders?"

@Captain_Toad It seems like the biggest no-brainer doesn't it? I can't fathom why Nintendo hasn't done it.

An Amiibo focused game would be nice. I do think the software integration has been lacking in most games. I was interested that Super Mario Maker supported most Amiibo, then disappointed when they only unlocked costumes.

Comparing that to Code Name S.T.E.A.M., I think it did a pretty good job of using Amiibo, adding whole new characters to the game. Having the Amiibo gave a definite benefit without detracting from the game.

@Captain_Toad
Nintendo isn't stupid enough to do it yet.
They will receive so much backlash and hate from gamers, if they did something like that.

I wish some more Amiibo support in some games would be nice.

Though all these Amiibo sales, should give Nintendo the leverage to get more shelf space next gen.

@Mr_Zurkon I completely agree. I'm not much of a collector, and I haven't bought any amiibo because of this. I might get the Shovel Knight amiibo because that actually looks like it's adding a substantial amount to the game, but all I've seen out of other amiibo are cheap little additions or buffs that I really don't care for.

Nintendo knows better. It made "sense" to just do an amiibo me too game. But they were right not to do it and I can give you 270 million reasons why. Whatever they did how they did they struck gold with amiibo and it's a phenomenal succees.

@Sam_Loser2 There were people upset over the Amiibo characters in Codename STEAM. I hope Roy is added in as well as Corrin.

@dumedum It's a huge success because many of these characters have never been released as a figure before and people love Nintendo. It also helped that supply was so weak in the beginning that it became a hot "investment" for awhile. I think it's about to hit a wall unless they do something quick.

@Mr_Zurkon Maybe its because its a slap in the face to consumers that you need to spend more than an average game for these sorts of things?

Here's one for you. Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival. If that game didn't do much, I doubt that Nintendo skylanders will win.

If they do an Amiibo-centered game, it hopefully won't require Amiibos to be playable at all. I know that sounds kinda backward but I think people would complain if they went the "you need an amiibo to play" route. So I imagine it like that:

Three playable characters are unlocked from the get-go (e.g. Mario, Link and Pikachu) and you'd have to unlock the other characters by scanning them in ONCE and only once.

Characters can also be leveled up and increase in stats like Strength, Speed, Health etc. They'd also learn new Special Moves like the Fire Ball and F.L.U.D.D. for Mario. However, there should be a limit of like three spaces you can place Special Moves in. There should also be a gauge that needs to fill up for a special move to be used. Like for a less powerful move, the gauge would fill up faster but for a more powerful move, the gauge would take longer. Like in Xenoblade.

There could be Nintendo-themed worlds to explore with gameplay slightly varying from world to world based on the gameplay of the original title (like Mushroom Kingdom is more platforming-based whereas on Planet Zebes, you'd be handed a Blaster to blast whole hordes of enemies). Like two of these worlds are unlocked from the start, the rest has to be unlocked by, again, scanning in the right amiibo (e.g. scan in Kirby, Meta-Knight or King Dedede to unlock Dream Land).

You should be able to save your progress onto an amiibo to bring it to a friend's house so you can play with him with all your leveled up characters.

Additionally, scanning in the amiibo of the character you are playing as will unlock a special power-up that is unique to said character (e.g. Mario receives a Star and is temporarily invincible; Luigi gets the Poltergust 3000 and sucks up all enemies in the area). This should only work like once a level, though.

The overall gameplay, though, shouldn't be too similar to Skylanders. I don't exactly know how but I just don't want a Nintendo-themed Skylanders.

Nintendo can't seem to win with amiibo. Despite what that guy says I think sales are slow going down. Have seen lots of amiibo on shelves recently and I really doubt it's all due to large stock increases. And if the make them integral to games people will complain, and if they don't do enough people will complain. And I think it's about a 60-40 split so fairly even.

Nintendo best bet would be to offer the DLC for less without amiibo but also have amiibo do more. Both sides may complain more then, but it would show they are working on trying to reach a compromise.

For example - sell the Splaton challenges for $4 each or all 3 for $10. Include the CLOUD and Bayonetta SSB DLC with the amiibo. There are ways to make both sides happy if Nintendo would just make the effort. Sell the AC:aF characters in game for $2 each.

The separate game needs to get done though. Even if it's built on top of Mine craft U and dome type of story is added like Dragon Quest Builders. Maybe an NX launch title, Nintendo Land 2 were the game is free but each amiibo opens it's game. But the whole game area, not just demos like Greatest Bits, that's just insulting.

Smash MOBA with amiibo unlocking exclusive costumes or even the characters themselves.

@Socar Do you like the current use or lack thereof of amiibo? Your complaint is odd when Wii U has Disney Infinity, Skylanders and Lego Dimensions available for it right now. Do you have a linkable source that says Animal Crossing amiibo is not doing well or not making money, I haven't seen anything one way or another.

"Nintendo needs an amiibo based game."

Looks at Amiibo festival.

If they do an exclusive Amiibo game this must be free or all gamers will hate to be obligated to buy the toys.

@shaneoh I think he meant "Nintendo needs a GOOD amiibo based game."

Or, maybe utilize the data chip within the amiibo.
Haven't people thought of doing this like in Smash?

Like, instead of just unlocking a costume in Super Mario Maker, maybe it could also be utilized to share levels as well without having to bother with the codes. Or, better yet, allow you to import or download all the levels that creator has made.

Get people to share amiibo, already.

The amiibo could be used like the wiimotes. Remember? all wiimotes have internal data but all forgot that. It was used to whare mii´s and brawl save.

@GoldenGamer88
We all like to scan it ONCE. But that defeats the purpose of "toys to life" concept BECAUSE if you scan it only once, you forget about the toy. It should require you to scan it every time you use it at least on amiibo-centric games.

@Mr_Zurkon it sold 40k opening month stated by npd. That is horrendous for an animal crossing game or any first party title for that matter

@faint All the more reason why 3rd parties are going to be desperately needed to support the NX.

Nintendo needs more amiibo unlockable content they can show off! Would have loved to see character related gear in Splatoon.

I personally think that Nintendo needs to back off of amiibo a bit. If AC:AF has proven anything, games that require amiibo to work aren't successful or worth it. While I do think that more games supporting more amiibo is a good thing, making a fully-fledged game which makes them mandatory isn't the way to go.

Nintendo can't really win either way people will always complain. Not enough Amiibo support people with Amiibo complain that they don't do enough. Too much and people will complain about the pay wall.

They really should start taking the LEGO Dimensions tack, and have the Amiibo unlock character/universe-specific levels/worlds in games. In Super Smash Bros., for example, they missed a great opportunity for the Amiibo to be used to unlock character-themed levels to fight in, different from the ones already in place. Mario Kart could've similarly used them to unlock special tracks to race on (a single track per Amiibo). Sadly, they were designed to only be usable with a single game at a time, which really limits their appeal, in my opinion.

No, no, no.no more Amiibos.

Nintendo is going overboard with these toys. And they will loose their core gamer eventually unless they limit the amount of games that have Amiibos.

Look at the recent rubbish games that Nintendo have churned out to capitalise on these toys.

Gamers rather that toy collectors are not stupid and if they have to buy a toy to get the most from a game, they will not buy the game, and will abandon Nintendo and when the Amiibo bubble bursts, it will be good bye Nintendo.

Wait for Starfox. The delay was in part, to up the Amiibo content.

@shaneoh Yeah, I was thinking about that too.
Amiibo Festival is a great letdown in its concept. It's the most skylander-ish thing Nintendo has put out... And I hope that future amiibo-centered software will be, if not free, at least not full reatail price games...

I love my amiibos but, yeah, they should do more with them. But not THAT MUCH more, and for that price.

Bring on the Tetris block amiibo!

Nintendo have a tricky balance to find with Amiibo. I feel like they need to add a lot more value to amiibos but also not lock away features.

One way they could have been better is if amiibo tap had given full NES games. That's not overboard - a £3.50 download for an £11 toy, and not something you can't just buy anyway, and not something that people should consider should just have been included in another purchase (like a feature in a full retail game).

That seems like the best value concept to me - buy this toy and get this bundle of goodies. Just want one part of the bundle? - buy it separately.

Contrary to those analysts claims (which are notoriously inaccurate), the toys to life market is showing obvious signs of a slowdown. LEGO Dimensions, for example, has failed to take off with consumers as expected. Disney Infinity has had to regularly discount its premier Star Wars toys. And some Amiibo are starting to clog shelves.

It would be nice if the Amiibos were the unlockable characters themselves.

Instead of buying software DLC and then buying the Amiibos after the fact, you could just buy the Amiibo and unlock that character for the game.

I started with the Amiibo line back in Nov 2014. They are 100% collectibles for me. I rarely scan them into games and I only trained about 3-4 of my original Amiibo figures in Smash. I have a Link, Mario, Marth and Villager trained up and thats it. The rest are just high quality collectibles at a reasonable price. I'm completely ok with that. My Disney 3.0 Star Wars figures are different. I use those in the game all the time. They also look good, too =)

Open up Mario Kart so that your Amiibo not only unlocks a costume but an actual character you can race as like in Infinty Toybox Speedway. Also allow costumes to be in all 4 Mario Maker Themes. That's what I would like to see.

What odds on NX launching with Nintendoland 2 (with full Amiibo support)?

I do think that Nintendo Is trying to do smaller amiibo based games (Mario party's amiibo mode, AC Amiibo Festival) instead of throwing all their eggs into a clone of the existing toys to life games. That isn't to say that there is not room for an Amiibo DI game but I think they want to make amiibo spread and touch all of their software so that it functions as a perk without being a forced requirement. Personally as a heavy amiibo user I like what they are doing so far but I do think that there is room for more growth...thing is I think that growth is on the way.

Watch out for the nfc cheat device coming soon... Pretty sure that will work with multiple toys-to-life franchises and will surely be popular with anyone who wants the content only without the toy. It might pay to have the locked content as dlc then. Personally, I like things legit. I do have some toys-to-life figures, but I feel myself resenting the cost, especially with Dimensions at £30 for a 2 hour level. I buy amiibo largely as collectibles.

@Captain_Gonru "Talk to the people who stock the shelves."

That would be you. Though I do see a lot of it myself it's also a corroboration of what you've been saying. It's good to have more than one source. I'm smart enough to not trust my own eyes.

And the more I think about it, the more I want the Cloud and Bayonetta amiibo to unlock the DLC. $7 for DLC and $13 for amiibo is $20. But I can just own the DLC w/o the amiibo or own the amiibo and not care about playing, which I really don't. There just isn't enough relationship between the amiibo and the DLC. I mean they really aren't connected in the least are they? It defies logic.

An amiibo-based game would be nice, since I could use some more use for my amiibos (remembers Amiibo Festival). NO! Not that! Something else! Please!

So an analyst is once again chanting, "GROWTH! GROWTH! MORE GROWTH!" ...Why am I not surprised? They wouldn't know how to maintain a steady rate of resource management if the instructions smacked them in the face. I can't wait until these things become fodder for a huge art assemblage of discarded, overproduced Chinese toys, like these:

https://www.ndigallery.com/art-gallery/by-artist/artists-a-d/category/14-robert-bradford (Just imagine 1000 Amiibo coming together to form a Super Amiibo!)

http://photomichaelwolf.com/#the-real-toy-story-factory-workers-portraits/1 (Especially "The installation" on that page, just imagine a whole wall of Amiibo and other "toys to life" figures, once they're discarded, break, or become useless)

The full article was a nice read. Kimishima is spot on how fans are collecting, not using amiibo. I still ponder how people (not all) can hoard and buy them way over msrp especially with smash wave 1-5 when it's mostly to show off. amiibo like WFT and Villager have only one use earlier this year yet sold for over $60.

Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival is $38.53 on Amazon.com right now yet there is those that are willing to pay almost the same price for Isabelle and Digby on it's own. I guess pride can overcome logic.

Back on topic, If most future games support amiibo in some way that is unique for each one and not a same for all type way, I'll be happy.

@ultraraichu "I still ponder how people (not all) can hoard and buy them way over msrp especially with smash wave 1-5 when it's mostly to show off. amiibo like WFT and Villager have only one use earlier this year yet sold for over $60."

Same thing as what happened with Beanie Babies. There used to be a huge market for those in the 90s, with some being worth $100 or even $500, and now they're all mostly worthless, at least monetarily. They might still make nice little gifts. But then, those are animal bean bag plushies, not plastic figurines...

@PlywoodStick Yeah, that was a weird craze like Furby. At the time I thought they were just fun to play with and grown ups were buying it for their kids, I was around 7-9 around the high point of popularity. I didn't knew the true facts until 2006 or so. Never knew I was playing with a box full of gold at the time.

@GoldenGamer88 You do realize that even tho your idea sounds great from a consumer point of view it is crazy from a business point of view? Anything they make for amiibos are to sell amiibos, nothing more..

Nintendo facing a double edge sword with amiibo. I remember when a critic complained about splatoon because it was walk behind content and the same goes with amiibo festival. People will complain because it's locked behind downloadable content but then people complain when you can only use it once and never have to use it again. And then and amiibo festival ppl complain about having to tap in constantly like a board game. So I don't really know what or how Nintendo can do this without someone complaining. The only safest one that I can bet on so far is Mario maker where you can unlock in the game in a more difficult way Robin just typing in the mirror if you already have one. All we can do is just wait and see.

Nintendo facing a double edge sword with amiibo. I remember when a critic complained about splatoon because it was walk behind content and the same goes with amiibo festival. People will complain because it's locked behind downloadable content but then people complain when you can only use it once and never have to use it again. And then and amiibo festival ppl complain about having to tap in constantly like a board game. So I don't really know what or how Nintendo can do this without someone complaining. The only safest one that I can bet on so far is Mario maker where you can unlock in the game in a more difficult way Robin just typing in the mirror if you already have one. All we can do is just wait and see.

While a stronger digital presence would give more reason to buy amiibo, would you really want / be able to afford that? I do think that since amiibo has been a run away hit, more game functionality (to unlock things like costumes) would be helpful to the consumers. But I don't want to see Nintendo go the route of "let's make a smash bros game where every character is locked behind a $13 amiibo". I prefer to buy a game and have the core functionality free.

Additionally, Nintendo has been getting better at producing amiibo, and the scalper situations/prices have finally been going down. A consideration for making amiibo more popular digitally, is that if it happens, Nintendo will essentially recreate the supply shortage/scalper situation by bringing up the demand on all amiibo. Nintendo has done a great job at producing many kinds of amiibo, I presume over 40-50+ different kinds within a year. While they can restock the more popular figures from time to time, I doubt they can restock all of them to the satisfaction of the customer if they were all to suddenly become high in demand (additionally, stores would have a hard time managing and shelving that many items in addition to other toys-to-life competitors).

If Nintendo were to make an amiibo-centric game, I think the best and perhaps only feasible solution would probably be to:
first release amiibo cards for all existing figures to unlock the digital functionality. These would enable Nintendo to produce and make available all digital content, and give a lower price to those who only care about digital. Would probably only work for any read-only amiibo options, as I presume that amiibo cards cannot store the same level of data as regular amiibo.

So far, Mario Maker is the best example of amiibo unlockables imo, incorporating the use of several amiibo, but not making it mandatory (there is a way, albeit [too] slow, to unlock every costume without amiibo). Not a big problem though cause even if you don't own the amiibo, you can still enjoy the use of the costume from others who make/edit stages with that amiibo costume. Presuming a casual amiibo collector, this implementation also works well. If your all-time favorite character say is Greninja and you have the amiibo, you can use your Greninja amiibo to have him make a cameo appearance in the game. If this was done for other games, it'd be an ideal/optimal implementation for kids / fans of said character. It should be noted that trying to incorporate 40-50+ ~extra characters in every game is not an easy task, though, so do take development efforts into consideration (prior to just assuming Nintendo can/should do it all).

@Splatburst For that, though, I feel like Nintendo has to create something like a Skylanders Portal where you can put your amiibo and all scanning in is done as long as the amiibo is on the portal. Doesn't the 3DS Amiibo Reader function similar to that? Don't know because I don't own one.

@FreakFerrett Yes, I do realize that. That's why I proposed the idea that you could power-up your character for a short time by scanning in an amiibo. Or there could be collectibles that are sometimes located behind a section of the level that can only be done with the help of a certain character (like Skylanders type-specific gates just based on a special character).
I know that you're supposed to "build up a relationship with your amiibo" or something like that but honestly, I think I'd hate that figurine more and more with every scan. At least it was like that in Smash Bros. But maybe I'm just the minority here. Personally, though, I think a Skylanders Portal-type platform could be the solution to the tedious scanning process. That way, I could even see the requirement to have the amiibo with you to play as a certain character.

With Nintendo finally creating smartphone games and apps, I think they should make Amiibos work with certain smartphones and tablets that have NFC connectivity. Use it for the functions similar to what New 3DS and Wii U is doing right now, but on smartphone games. It'll definitely broaden amiibo's usage and appeal.