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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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Stephen said:
Nothing that has been done with amiibo so far would have been impossible without the figures.

What do you have in mind? I can't imagine anything they could do that would be impossible without the figures.
01/16/15, 14:21   
@Jargon

That's what I'm saying. Given that it is just an extremely small storage device I don't think there is anything that amiibos make possible that couldn't otherwise be done. It's about how to position them in the games to entice people to buy the figures. It isn't about how amiibos make these games better or how they add to it because based on the tech I don't think there's a way to do it. So when we are talking about how to improve amiibo the goal of trying to make them compelling based on doing something cool with them that isn't just paywalling content or frivolous extras is kind of missing the point. They want to sell figures first and have cool uses for them second. In that respect I don't think cutting back on amiibos or doing it an alternate way would be better than where they are now at least from a sales perspective.
01/16/15, 14:32   
Edited: 01/16/15, 14:33
@Stephen

Well, the obvious thing is how the figurines interact with the imagination of children. That's why I think a game that plays on that which adults can ignore is the best idea.
01/16/15, 15:24   
@Mop it up
Nintendo wouldn't have done that, it's too in line with what others have done. Nintendo always likes to add their little spin.
01/16/15, 15:55   
@Jargon@Mop it up

Nintendo Land 2: March of the Amiibos!

I think that would have been perfect marketing.
01/16/15, 17:31   
@kriswright
I'll be really surprised if something like that never happens.
01/16/15, 17:41   
@Stephen That's exactly why I don't like the idea, I couldn't have put it better meself. Believe me, I've tried. It didn't happen.

I'm not interested in every game Nintendo make and I don't expect everything they do to appeal to me. So if they had just made one or two games/series to base around amiibos then I would be okay with that. But using bits and pieces of most of their games, regardless of how significant it is or isn't, is just lame.
01/17/15, 00:38   
It could be some free thing like they have Streetpass games. Encourage people to either get more amiibos or share them with friends.
01/17/15, 01:00   
I find it odd that several people seem to have no problem being able to ignore a hypothetical game that requires amiibo to unlock the use of specific characters within that game (a game that would cost several hundred dollars to "fully" experience), but are apparently completely incapable of ignoring the minimal content hidden behind the use of amiibo in a few games here and there.
01/17/15, 05:44   
@Koovaps

What's an upcoming Nintendo game that we know doesn't have amiibo content? At this point, it doesn't seem like it's a few games here and there.
01/17/15, 06:02   
@Jargon

You're right. It is a bunch of them. The more I think about it, I think they probably should sell all this amiibo content separately as DLC as well. As an amiibo owner, I wouldn't care at all that others could get the content cheaper. and I'd expect demand to still remain relatively high for amiibo. I'm sure there would still be complaints about on-disc DLC, though. Can't please everybody.
01/17/15, 14:04   
@Koovaps

If the card versions are cheap and easy to get, that'll be close enough to what you're suggesting that I'd basically be fine with it. But we know very little about that option so too early to say.
01/17/15, 14:29   
I don't think selling the DLC separately is a good solution. Better I guess but not good. Like I said before in that case it is essentially on disc DLC you have to pay for.
01/17/15, 14:34   
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