Everything we’ve seen thus far of amiibo has been limited to first-party content. However, Nintendo is now looking into ways its third-party partners can integrate figures into their games.
Nintendo of America licensing manager Damon Baker told IGN:
“We’re having those conversations and we’re still early on because amiibo isn’t even going to launch until later this month. We’re excited to see how that pans out but there’s a ton of interest from our third-party partners and we’re looking at what makes sense in terms of business models and levels of integration. There are really creative ideas that are coming through and we are working towards some opportunities for next year.”
Marketing director David Wharton also said:
“Think about our implementation for our products, it’s really developer-centric. It’s really about opening up new capabilities and new ways of extending the value of games and bringing the functionality into games. As a company we’re interested in as many different creative explorations of that functionality. Exactly what that’s going to be in the future, not only for third-party but first-party, that story has yet to be written. We’ve got a couple of examples of how it’s going to look today — but imagine the future, the sky is the limit.”
When the New 3DS was launching in Japan, we found out that the system couldn’t be registered on Club Nintendo. With the Australian release on the horizon, we’re now learning that the situation is the same in this region as well. The way things are going, the situation will probably end up being the same in North America and Europe!
Kenka Bancho 6: Soul & Blood will be available in Japan on January 15. Pricing is set at 5,980 yen. You’ll find the game’s boxart above.
