Thus far, Nintendo has only shown figurines in relation to amiibo. But the company apparently has other plans for the brand with additional products.

During the Q&A for Nintendo’s financial results briefing last week, there was talk about the different amiibo projects the company is working on for 2015 and the advantage of allowing them to be used in multiple games as well as the speediness of their read/write speeds.

It was later mentioned that Nintendo is planning non-figure based amiibo such as cards. While speaking about this, the Game Boy Advance e-Reader cards were referenced. Shigeru Miyamoto additionally discussed a card game in which you can play simply by swiping cards and then using them to record your play history. Miyamoto teased, “But I can’t talk about that specifically yet, however card games posses the potential to have a new structure with amiibo.”

Nintendo also has plans to create figures that are smaller and cheaper than the Smash Bros. ones. There does seem to be the possibility of using these kinds of figures in something such as Animal Crossing.

Finally, Miyamoto stated that he’s pushing teams to come up with non-standard uses of the Wii U’s NFC reader. Nintendo hopes to show some of their results in this area next year.

http://nintendoeverything.com/nintendo-working-on-amiibo-cards-smallercheaper-figures/

Oh, that'd be really nice. Instead of having to pay for a figure some people don't even really want you can just pick up cheap cards instead.

I like the idea of Amiibo figures better... Maybe it's just me.

The cards will happen with a new Pokemon game for the Wii U and 3DS, I predicted this ages ago when they first announced the NFC functionality. There are only so many figurines that people can fit into their homes.

I don't really know much about Pokemon tbh, but I imagine there are hundreds of different ones...the only way that you can buy and collect them all is to have cards instead of figurines.

Does anyone know when were getting a complete translation of the entire Q/A session?

Pokemon MMO with amibo/card support. Nintendo will never be in the red again.

Sounds cool. Nintendo is pretty smart.
Also, the Villager looks like a psichopath.

I like the idea of cards. The chips are small and don't need all that plastic.
It's cheaper and at least has some tradition with Nintendo's past.

Bring the cards, don't need the toys.

That's because he is one.

Yeah, but the odds of me losing a card is WAYYYYYYY greater than losing a figure. Not that I'm against the cards.