In a recent interview with ABC News, Shigeru Miyamoto has been discussing several aspects of Nintendo’s business strategy, including rumors like the leaked Sony Mario movie and upcoming plans for various games. One of the questions asked during the interview is what Nintendo plans to do with discontinued amiibo and whether or not they would be provided digitally for future games. Miyamoto’s answer was simple, in that if Nintendo wants to give players access to that character, they could include it in a card.
We’re not making promises for certain figures, but the way “amiibo” is designed is that certain games can have “amiibo” specifically for that game. Other games can take advantage of past “amiibo” that developers want to make their game compatible with. In the future, we have the option, if certain “amiibo” figures are no longer available in stores, to release an “amiibo” in card form with the same functionality.
It’s nice to see that Nintendo could potentially provide versions of characters on a card instead of having consumers hunt crazily for something that is no longer available. That being said, it does sort of diminish the magic of amiibo to hear the boss mention them being transformed into cards instead of figures.
