Scott Moffitt talks Amiibo, says Nintendo doesn’t want to mimic the competition
Nintendo of America executive vice president of sales and marketing Scott Moffitt shared a few more words about Amiibo while speaking with GamesIndustry.
Moffitt brought up a few points, such as how Nintendo wants to do something different and not mimic the competition. He also mentioned that Amiibo offers “a great value as parents don’t have to buy a starter kit.”
Moffitt ultimately sees Amiibo as something with a lot of potential due to the growing market and adoration of Nintendo IP.
“That’s what we will always do (give a different way to experience gaming). We want to be different. We want to create innovation and Amiibo is a perfect example. We didn’t just mimic what’s been done before with Skylanders and Infinity, we are bringing out a whole new idea in this toys-to-life gaming segment.”
“We’re trying to open up the aperture on toys-to-life to handheld gaming, to first-party games, to third-party games, and try to expand the category as quickly as we can and provide a different point of view in that segment.”
“It makes ours a great value as parents don’t have to buy a starter kit. So that’s a great value for parents. I don’t know how many of those portals people are going to want underneath their TV, if seven different gaming companies come with their own toys-to-life offering. Maybe it’s better if we standardize and there’s one portal and we hope the GamePad could be that. We’re already the destination of choice to play those games. Maybe everyone can align on using the NFC in the GamePad.”
“Skylanders will be going into its fourth holiday this year, so the category’s three-and-a-half years old and it’s grown every year, roughly doubling every year. It’s $1.4 billion in revenue this past year in the US alone. For the foreseeable future, I see this category continuing to grow. Our IP is so well-known and so beloved by game fans of all ages that I do believe the age demographic for Amiibo could potentially be broader than that for the current offerings.”
