While amiibo are an interesting way to interact with the game, they’ve become more of a collector’s item that people look forward to having on their shelves, rather than an interactive toy that should be played with. No one knows this better than Nintendo’s new president, Tatsumi Kimishima. We’ve already published some of his thoughts on the Wii U and the NX from Time’s interview with him, but his comments about how the public perceives amiibo is worth mentioning as well.
Kimishima stated very bluntly that he understands amiibo have lost their focus as consumers collect them, rather than play with them.
What we’re seeing instead is that the amiibo are being picked up more as a collection item at this point, rather than, say, as an interactive item with software. And so we haven’t really established them as an enhancement for all of our software at this point.
Nintendo has done a better job than most integrating these new toys-to-life concepts into their games, as the platform supports multiple Nintendo releases, even if not all amiibo are supported per game. That’s better than Skylanders or Disney Infinity, which has one big release a year with different playsets released in waves.
Either way, it looks like Nintendo may be reevaluating how we interact with amiibo in the future in order to encourage people to play with their amiibos, rather than collecting them in boxes to line shelves. What do you think? Has Nintendo done a good job integrated amiibo into their software since launch?
