A lot of news came out of Nintendo’s latest investor meeting regarding their third quarter financials, and amiibo made up a large portion of the company’s report.
Nintendo CEO and president Satoru Iwata revealed 5.7 million amiibo had been shipped by the end of last year, and 63% of amiibo sales come from the United States and Canada, with Europe, Japan, and Australia behind them respectively.
Iwata also noted that Link is currently the best-selling amiibo.
He went on comment about the high demand and low supply of Amiibo that many consumers have faced trying to find some of the figures, mentioning it was something “none of them had predicted”, and revealed when they may produce more of a particular amiibo.
It is difficult for us to promise to continuously ship all of the amiibo figures. We will, however, consider additional production in cases such as when an amiibo figure sells out shortly after launch, an amiibo is indispensable to play a certain game, and when we receive a lot of requests for an amiibo figure from consumers and retailers.
Iwata went on to discuss the release of amiibo in the form of cards, as revealed previously by Shigeru Miyamoto. After stating earlier that some out of stock amiibo may not be reproduced, Miyamoto said that functionality could still be obtained through the release amiibo in card form.
Iwata mentioned a free to download app will be coming to the Wii U in the first half of the year which will allow users to play “highlighted scenes” of particular NES/SNES games.
With this app, once you tap your amiibo on the NFC area of the GamePad, you will be able to play highlighted scenes of one certain title for NES or Super NES. You cannot play the entire game due to a time limit, but another tap of the amiibo will enable you to try another highlighted scene in the game. We hope that when you tap your amiibo, the quickly changing game scenes will pleasantly surprise you and make you feel as though you have just exchanged a game cartridge.
Finally, the external reader for amiibo compatibility for the current 3DS and 3DS XL models was revealed to be coming to Japan sometime this summer.
Are you still excited about amiibo? How do you feel about getting them in card form VS a figure? Let us know below!