One of the primary concerns for many Nintendo fans who are collecting amiibo is that the rare amiibo released within a wave are often gone before they’re even made available. The first run of amiibo saw the Wii Fit Trainer, Marth, and the Villager from Animal Crossing selling for upwards of $70 on eBay. Other rare amiibo like the Gold Mario managed to find their way to a 700% markup online.
While certain outlets have learned from the fiascos and have stopped accepting pre-orders, fans should be happy to know that Nintendo is working with retailers to reduce the impact that scalpers have on amiibo availability.
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz Scott Moffitt, Nintendo’s vice president of sales and marketing had this to say about amiibo availability and the steps Nintendo is taking to ensure customers can get their hands on their favorite figures.
We read demand signals from all sources. Pre-sell is a great indicator of potential demand. On some things, our supply chain is just quite long. On other things, it isn’t. On Wii U game discs, if you look at our biggest launches last year–Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros. for Wii U–no issues.
But on things like amiibo, or sometimes adapters or controllers, there’s just a longer lead time. We do the best we can to anticipate demand, but we don’t have a perfect crystal ball. We don’t always anticipate the right number. But we try to strike that balance of having enough to sufficiently satisfy demand but not to have too much. It’s just an inexact science, but we try to use every form of demand signal we can: pre-sale numbers, Google search trends, everything to anticipate what the true demand’s going to be.
Moffitt didn’t elaborate on the steps they’re taking with retailers, but given the fact that GameStop and Target have both limited the number of pre-orders available and the number of figures that can be bought at once, it’s likely Nintendo themselves are behind these policies.
