Reggie on Amiibo – could drive Wii U sales, why it’s taken so long to introduce, more
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime shared a few more words about Amiibo while speaking with Polygon at E3 2014 last week. Head past the break for his comments.
On Amiibo potentially having a “significant impact” on Wii U sales…
“I think Amiibo can have a significant impact on driving the install base for Wii U on the sales of figures themselves. I think this could be a significant business opportunity.”
On why it took so long for Nintendo to introduce its take on toys that can be uploaded into video games…
“One, we wanted to be thoughtful in our approach. In our view, going down this path you have to have differentiation. Second, we wanted to make sure that we would launch the concept with a big franchise, and certainly Smash (Bros.) fits that bill. Smash is really perfect. All the various characters, the gameplay that Mr. Sakurai has created is fantastic. So for us it was really making sure we had the right approach and the right method to launch it.”
– Reggie isn’t saying if any third-party devs are working on their own take on Amiibo
– This is an option however
On how Amiibo will be released…
“We have nothing to announce at this point. We will continue to make new figures available through the balance of holiday 2014 and then we’re going to continuously launch new figures throughout 2015. For us, we’re not putting a numerical limit on how many varied figures we can launch. Our potential catalog of figures in the space is quite broad.”
– The plan is to launch Amiibo at the same time as Smash with “about 10” figures
On how Amiibo toys are based on characters from the Nintendo universe that have tremendous popularity…
“Even a figure like Marth, which, from a broad population, may not be well known but for that Smash playing audience, they know Marth. A lot of them enjoy playing as Marth. And then we believe that, given the lineup of figures, we’re going to have a more diverse ownership base, not only male and female (because of Peach and Yoshi that appeal to girls) but also from an aging up standpoint because people are going to want to collect Samus. You’re going to have people who want to collect Link, all these fantastic characters. So we think our footprint is going to be much larger than what the other people in this space have been able to accomplish.”
On how Amiibo is different from the competition…
“What I would tell you is that we do believe the cross-game play is a big advantage for us. And having a Mario figure that could be potentially used in not only Smash Bros. but also in Mario Kart as well as in Mario Party 10. We think that’s a pretty strong competitive advantage. The specifics of the gameplay will be unique to the game, and it is really up to the developer to program. So you will have a developer create a mechanism like what Mr. Sakurai is doing, where it really is a leveling up mechanic. And you’ll have other developers taking different approaches. You might have a developer decide, you know what, I want to reward someone who has purchased multiple Mario games, and that really has given Mario uber powers. That’s the way he’ll program it.”
