Nintendo and amiibo: Smart or Stupid?

Unless you have been living under a rock, it’s fairly obvious that amiibos appear to be the must have ‘toy’ since late November. Within my Nintendo circle of gamers, I’ve heard far less about Skylanders and Disney Infinity and more about amiibos. So, has Nintendo done well with amiibo by making them collectible, or are they losing hundreds of thousands of dollars because of supply issues?

If you want a Meta Knight, King DeDeDe, Villager, Wii Fit Trainer and many other amiibos, you are completely out of luck. There is an outside potential that Nintendo decides to restock the hard to find amiibos, but it appears unlikely. If catching up with demand was a high priority for Nintendo, they would do that before unleashing wave after wave of figures.

The only way to get these collectible toys – lets face it, these have become highly collectible – is to spend large amounts of money on eBay, Amazon, or other resell sites. It’s becoming ridiculous, and Nintendo’s continued advertisement for unattainable amiibo is bordering on cruel.

Take Nintendo’s latest release, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. I cannot tell you how many times Nintendo advertised Kirby, King DeDeDe, and Meta Knight on Twitter to go along with their release: the problem with that is that King DeDeDe and Meta Knight cannot be obtained at retail.

Smart or Stupid

Nintendo has created hype around their product despite not having amiibo specific software to launch beside them. While they do unlock features in other games, there is no amiibo only game. By making some harder to find than others, Nintendo has really created viral marketing. News outlets that normally wouldn’t talk about amiibo, are talking about amiibo. Heck, even my local, small town paper wrote a few articles on people waiting overnight to get some (rumored) hard to get amiibos.

Personally, I gave up collecting amiibos. I felt that if I couldn’t get them all, or even get all of a set (Kirby), I didn’t want to get any of them. So, despite once having a whole bunch, I’ve since sold most and currently only have Mario, Kirby, Bowser and Mega Man; I’ve only kept these because my son likes them. I’m intrigued by the Super Mario lineup that is set to launch beside Mario Party, but the difficulty in finding Toad for preorder is already deterring me.

Have Nintendo been smart about amiibo or are they leaving thousands – if not millions – of dollars on the table by a lack of supply?