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Amiibos! How do you feel about the phenomenon? [roundtable]
 
Since the other thread seems like it's mostly about procurement. I'm curious as to how all of my NW chums have been affected by the Amiibo craze. I think it's kind of insane that releasing a steady string of amazing games only marginally helped Nintendo's position, but releasing a bunch of practical figures of questionable utility has made such a splash. (I say "questionable utility", but I personally enjoy the Amiibo integration into Smash Bros. I think it's innovative and cool.) That said, I can't deny feeling the hunger myself.

Anyway, I'll ask a couple of questions. Feel free to answer as many as you wishhh...

1) How many Amiibos did you originally think you were going to buy?


2) How many Amiibos do you have so far?


3) How many of them are still in the box?


4) Have you felt the hunger?


5) How far have you gone to obtain one? (ex. highest price paid, most finagling, import, pre-order, etc.)


6) How do you feel about the Amiibo product, overall? Cool toy? Real-life Pokemon metagame? Crass and exploitative?


I'll answer in a while. Unless the thread disappears, in which case I will forget.

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01/01/15, 23:15  
 
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@Anand

Haha, well the fact that Mario Party 9 and 3DS were big disappointments to me does make this easier to swallow. But I've still got hope for improvement!

I suppose the amiibo mode didn't really look very interesting, though, and extraneous modes that I never play have actually always been part of the Mario Party package now that I think about it.
01/15/15, 05:39   
Edited: 01/15/15, 05:39
With the exception of Hyrule Warriors, it seems that Nintendo has done a good job with keeping amiibo features generally like "extra little bonuses" for amiibo buyers to toy with, rather than "IF YOU DON'T GET THIS YOU MISS OUT ON CRUCIAL DLC. PAY UP."
01/15/15, 06:08   
The amiibo mode in Mario Party 10 may not look interesting, but it's the principle of the thing. This is still now a game mode locked behind amiibo, which means their use is becoming more prominent, and more significant than just things like Mii costumes. What will be locked behind them next? Something even more significant? Something I actually will care about?
01/15/15, 22:13   
@PogueSquadron

The spinner is hardly crucial DLC. I still haven't used it.
01/15/15, 22:39   
How do we know this game mode wasn't devised just because they wanted to do something for amiibo. In the end I know it's easy to see it as locked behind something but it also could be an added bonus if the rest of the game is at least as full as past titles. Maybe this mode never would have existed at all without amiibo. /devilsadvocatekirby
01/15/15, 22:40   
@DrFinkelstein
Exactly my opinion. We have no way of knowing if this is indeed content that we have lost because of Amiibo or content that we have gained because of Amiibo and it is silly to judge it as either.
01/15/15, 22:45   
That just sounds like making up excuses for why people should never complain about anything, and that's silly.
01/15/15, 22:53   
I don't really have a problem with Amiibo-exclusive content, as long as they actually make the stupid things easy enough to find.
01/15/15, 23:12   
DeputyVanHalen said:
I don't really have a problem with Amiibo-exclusive content, as long as they actually make the stupid things easy enough to find.
Pretty much this. I mean, if they aren't readily on store shelves five years from now that's one thing, but less than two months after launch and three (potentially seven) amiibo are next to impossible to find in the US, allegedly discontinued. That's ridiculous.

Europe and Japan seem to be getting healthy restocks though.
01/15/15, 23:31   
@Pokefreak911

Again, if all I care about is getting the full Mario Party experience, this is a complete screw job. No way those boards would cost $13 each as DLC.
01/16/15, 01:28   
@DrFinkelstein

Here's the problem with this type of thinking: It is both technically unlikely and it assigns Nintendo a whole bunch of benefit of the doubt when they are both the ones coming up with these features as well as profiting from them. Amiibos have a very small storage capacity that is read from and in the case of Smash Bros and MP10 written to. Instead of an amiibo ask yourself how you can make an 8 KB flash drive an exciting gaming peripheral in a way that the drive is necessary. You really can't do it without just having that functionality be in the game completely and amiibos/flash drive unlocking it. So in a case like Mario Party when you ask if maybe it was done specifically for amiibos it isn't the same as a developer actually taking on a new piece of hardware that affords new possibilities like say Wii Motion Plus or something. You could do everything that amiibos do without amiibos but Nintendo is in the business of selling amiibos now so that won't happen.

@Jargon

Not to mention it would be on disc DLC which is oh-so-loved.
01/16/15, 01:32   
Edited: 01/16/15, 01:33
@Stephen

Yea, not to mention it seems much more likely to me that Mario Party 10 had a set budget and game development time for everything, including any amiibo support, and these modes obviously would eat into that budget and development time that could have been spent on something else for everyone (like the same mode and boards for free). I guess it's possible the budget was expanded to make room for amiibos, but even if that's the case, I'm still stuck knowing that content has been locked away from me for no reason other than to sell figurines.
01/16/15, 01:36   
@DrFinkelstein To be honest looking at that mode I feel like that is exactly what happened. It looks so plain and possibly? thrown together.

I still don't really like locking out content with Amiibos though. Especially if it becomes a regular thing in like every Nintendo published game over time.
01/16/15, 01:36   
@Stephen

I definitely am not on board with that small-ass storage. In this day in age, they should have created some kind of system to allow at least up to like... 3 games on each amiibo with a small app for amiibo management. If anything, an app that lets you save to the hard drive so you can swap out would be fine. This erase as needed is bollocks.
01/16/15, 01:44   
@DrFinkelstein

The erase as needed is by design. Of course if you don't want to keep erasing Nintendo just revealed a new line of figures you could keep totally separate.
01/16/15, 01:46   
The problem with "what ifs" is that we could come up with an infinite number of them. What if, without amiibo, a different mode existed instead? What if, without amiibo, different characters were playable? What if, without amiibo, they wouldn't even make the game? We have no way of knowing, so I can judge only based on what exists rather than what may have existed.
01/16/15, 01:50   
@Mop it up

If you were Nintendo, how would you have handled amiibo. Without saying "I wouldn't have done it." If you were in charge, what would be your route?

And I'm not trying to be catty or in uber defense of amiibo. I'm not in totally love with amiibo either. I have my criticisms but they don't align with other's on here. I am just genuinely curious how you, or others, would have handled it. I'm certain there's a lot that could be better about it.
01/16/15, 02:10   
@DrFinkelstein

I would have just created a new series of games (Amiibo Land or whatever) that used amiibos so that people who weren't interested could ignore them and not have to worry about them popping up in every Nintendo game.
01/16/15, 02:14   
I would have created a specific Skylanders/Disney Infinity sort of game/series with a uniquely Nintendo flair that used amiibos. I think this could be a success on its own, and there'd still be plenty of people collecting the figures.
01/16/15, 02:16   
@DrFinkelstein

How about if it was just a line of toys? What about unlocking stuff that can be bought separately if people choose to do so? How about a free game like Skylanders that you get the content for by scanning in the toys?

In general though I just don't want them.

Let's not think about this differently than how it is though. Nintendo saw a way to make money off of this amiibo initiative and then went from game to game and asked what they could do within reason that would make the toys compelling but not piss off too many people. It was never about what was best for the games. It was about the best way to position amiibo. Nothing that has been done with amiibo so far would have been impossible without the figures.
01/16/15, 14:13   
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