Ever since they were announced at E3 2014, Nintendo’s Amiibo has become a runaway hit for the company. Once thought as a Skylander rip-off, Amiibos have become fan-favorites and almost as crucial to a Nintendo release as the game itself.
But as Amiibos grow in number and popularity, Nintendo has been tasked with making the figures new again at E3 2015 and they have done just that with the roll-out of the Amiibo cards with the now announced Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival for the Wii U and Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer for the 3DS.
Using these new Amiibo cards, players can design houses on either the Wii U or 3DS game and save them onto your card for easy sharing with friends.
“This is the first time you will be able to have Amiibo cards or another form or Amiibo,” executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, Scott Moffitt said. “It just shows how we are trying to transform what consumers come to expect in the choice of life category. Now your toy can be a card.”
Moffitt believes that having Amiibo trading cards may create a trading frenzy among fans so they can collect them all. And it’s easier than ever to trade because as Moffitt points out you can trade, collect and carry a stack of Amiibo cards around at all times. You couldn’t do that before with the Amiibo figures.
So what’s the future outlook for the Amiibo cards?
“You can only use these cards in the Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival for the Wii U and for Happy Home Designer on the 3DS,” Moffitt said. “More to come, possibly? Stay tuned, all we can say is that they are playable and usable in those two games.”
Another huge development from Nintendo at E3 was the collaboration with Activision’s Skylanders Superchargers. During the announcement it was revealed that Nintendo have created two special Amiibo that will work with both Skylanders and other Nintendo games like Super Smash Bros.
“That’s the second way we are transforming Amiibo,” Moffitt said. “We have new forms and secondly we have new collaborators.”
The new Bowser and Donkey Kong Amiibo will be fully functional in the Skylanders Supercharged game but with a flip of a switch you can use them in another game.
Nintendo’s third way of transforming Amiibo is present in the upcoming Wii U game, Yoshii’s Wooly World. The game will have special Amiibo that are made with real yarn. There is nothing like it in the world and they will have the same NFC capability that all the other Amiibo do.
With these new changes to Amiibo, you can’t say Nintendo doesn’t switch things up and doesn’t know how to keep hype alive for a product.
And according to Moffitt, the “choice of life” that comes with an expanding catalogue and gaming space at retailers is present with the Wii U and its Amiibos.
However, choice and transformative new products are all well and good when the product is readily available to the public. North America has seen a shortage of Amiibo in retail stores across the country, leading to scalped prices online and consumers lining up at stores hoping to get the Amiibo they desire.
“I want to thank our fans. The fans have responded to Amiibo in a fantastic way. And clearly they enjoy collecting them, enjoy playing with them and it’s been great to see,” Moffitt said. “We are well aware that a lot of game fans have had trouble finding all the Amiibo they want to find and that we sold through too quickly, some of the quantities we brought in. And for that we apologize. We are doing everything we can to try and help and improve the situation.”
According to Moffitt, Nintendo of America is doing three things to rectify the Amiibo shortages in the country.
“One we are producing more and bringing in more into the market for the new Amiibo we are launching. So we’ve ramped up production and making more,” Moffitt said. “Second thing we are doing is being more proactive about communicating to game fans when new Amiibo are coming or when reruns of previously released Amiibo are coming in to the market.”
Moffitt hopes this method will eliminate players’ need to call and visit stores constantly for updates on stock. The third way to help the Amiibo shortage is for Nintendo to work with retailers on making the buying experience better. But Moffitt admits that it all starts and ends with increased supply.
“We are aware of the frustration and we ask fans to be patient and understanding and stick with it because there’s a lot of fun to be had.”
