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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - How would you do amiibo?

tl;dr
Not sure why Nintendo is surprised amiibo are being collected or bought by fans since they marketed it as such (and it sure made them a lot of money). The only issue that its multi-game compatibility became a mess.

How would you have done amiibo?

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Been meaning to make this thread since Nintendo admited that amiibo are being collected instead of used two months ago. I think it mainly boils down to Super Smash Bros. 4, the game that launched amiibo.

After turning down Skylanders to then become a financial success, Nintendo had to add NFC to its next device. Guess Nintendo was initially thinking where to release these NFC tags, if as figures or cards. Surely while waiting and playing with Pokemon Rumble U; the obvious fit with Smash came up, the game already had Nintendo figurines... loads and loads. And here is the issue with amiibo and why it became a collectable.

In 2014 when amiibo was announced, Nintendo had to justify and differentiate itself from the competition. The main feature for this was multi-game compatibility, but also the quality of the toys. They surely didn't think it through, since in the end it has resulted in complicated compatibility usage that requires website or fan-based lists being made (I've even seen charts and tables in shops...). 

Let's return to Smash, a game with so many characters, that means a lot of figurines will need to be made ($_$). But how do you make each an everyone of those compatible with other software?

Have to say that Smash is one of the few games that uses amiibo in a reasonable way, you just pick the character you like and battle with him. But after that the multi-game usage was seen as meaningless unlocks of skins and weapons from the NFC read capabilities and the meaningful NFC write features was only being used in Smash. Due to these read features, quite a few expected cheap NFC cards to come out; still demand increased for relevant multi-game usage, even a Skylanders adventure type of game.

The release of Mario Party 10 and the Mario series amiibo started to fragment the amiibo multi-game compatibility since it brought relevant write features into the game. You could only save one game features into an amiibo, meaning you had to delete your Mario Smash data to use in Mario Party 10 or just buy a new Mario amiibo from the Mario series.

From then on amiibo became compatible with read features or new amiibo series got released to lock content behind. Captain Toad is one, to then have one of the worst offenders, with Splatoon figurines only released to lock mini-games and single player challenges. New usage of amiibo was surfacing behind new amiibo, the multi-game usage feature started to become moot. Amiibo would only add features to the fans of the series who'd buy another figurine.

New forms like the Yoshi plush and Mario memorabilia tried to add special content to its title while keeping the multi-game compatibility in other games as simply Yoshi or Mario amiibo. Then the cards were released to support new titles... to end with the amiibo game everyone was waiting for.

Detailing what has happened has developed in quite a wall of text, sorry for that... Still we are left wondering where is amiibo going next? Nintendo isn't stopping and they are just letting the amiibo flow while collectors and fans continue to buy. In the future we have these new amiibo to look forward such as Wolf Link and Star Fox; maybe Pokken and... even more Splatoon.



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I'll just say what I would have done.

The figurines they have released so far are fine, keep making those so collectors and fans eat them all up.

But to make the multi-game usage easy and understandable, I would have kept amiibo unlockables inside colour classes (similar to what Skylander does). The base of the figure indicates what class your amiibo is. The game would then unlock features depending on the colour class, it could even be colour coded in the amiibo icon on the game's boxart.

Keep the classes simple with few colour choices like for example red, green, blue and yellow. Multi-game compatibility done easy, simple colour charts can detail them, then there would be no need to buy new amiibo for extra content if you own any of the four types.

Extra personalized skins as done in Mario Kart 8 or Mario Maker could still be done, but extra content like in Splatoon could be unlocked by the Squid amiibo or other green amiibo class like Link/Luigi/Yoshi/etc.



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All Amibo DLC would have been free with the appropriate figure and all other DLC for any game gets a 10% discount with more added (up to five) if you use more Amiibo. People without any Amiibo figurines could still but any DLC they wanted at full price.

 

Special Amiibo only sales in the eshop, too.  Got the right figure? You get to partake in the sale.



d21lewis said:

All Amibo DLC would have been free with the appropriate figure and all other DLC for any game gets a 10% discount with more added (up to five) if you use more Amiibo. People without any Amiibo figurines could still but any DLC they wanted at full price.

 

Special Amiibo only sales in the eshop, too.  Got the right figure? You get to partake in the sale.

That is actually an interesting marketing tactic. I wouldnt mind it at all. Nintendo may lose some money from digital sales but in the long run would stand to gain a lot more.

Also, why not let the Amiibo give discounts to Virtual Console games the figures belong too?

 

As for OP.

- Nintendo should stop releasing multiples of the same character. We dont need so many Marios / alternative colours.

- Actually make the Amiibo triple packs good value! In Australia they dont go on sale and always cost more than buying individually.

- Make each piece give a little something for every game. Like a cosmetic for Splatoon for example. Imagine an online game riddled with Microtransactions but instead of buying them all, scanning an Amiibo will unlock something free.

- Dont do what they did with the Animal Crossing amiibo; they dont do anything, only work for one game and are REQUIRED to play said game. TERRIBLE!



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I would have liked the ability to buy a character disk for $5-6 without the model, that just unlocked the DLC.



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Release as collectibles. No DLC attached to them. At the end of the day, people buy them to collect and not to play? Right? Or at least that's the excuse many say.



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I would have added the possibility to buy the DLC in the eShop if one doesn't have (or doesn't want to buy) the amiibo, with the possibility to get your money back on the DLC if you buy the amiibo later on.

Also, an amiibo-only free-to-play game which uses every normal amiibo (meaning the silver/gold versions just count the same as a normal amiibo because they are not available in every region) . I've already an idea for this which I call Nintendo Land 2. Basically you build your own Nintendo theme park in a way like the Theme Park or Rollercoaster Tycoon games on PC, and the amiibos unlock the attractions, food stands and restaurants, shops and items sold in them, costumes for entertainers, decoration and scenery items, and whatever I forgot to mention.



I would have just released them as is.... minus any NFC attached. The majority of people buy them as just collectibles. No one really cares about the extras inside of them. It wouldn't be getting any flack at all if they just made them as such.



 

              

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Cheaper. That's the only thing I would do to amiibo xD



Either two routes.

1. They should've just released them as mere collectables, with no NFC. As someone who collects amiibo, the only games where I really used amiibo was Splatoon, which was just for some quick minigames.

2. They really should tone down the amount of games that support amiibo. Seriously besides Majora's Mask and Xenoblade Chronicles X, I can't name a single Nintendo game after Smash Bros. from the top of my head that doesn't support amiibo . Some of the features are nice, but in the end, it's still DLC tied to a figurine which most people don't care for. It's even worse for games like Fire Emblem Fates, where Robin and Lucina amiibos are pretty rare unless you import.



"Just for comparison Uncharted 4 was 20x bigger than Splatoon 2. This shows the huge difference between Sony's first-party games and Nintendo's first-party games."