Nintendo España confirms Super Mario amiibo for Rosalina, Donkey Kong and Wario?
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Rumors | 11 Comments
Speculation about Rosalina, Donkey Kong and Wario getting their own Super Mario amiibo first surfaced last week when Nintendo updated the Japanese Mario Party 10 website with a few images (see above). Now Nintendo España is adding fuel to the fire and may have essentially confirmed the rumors.
Take a look at this roughly translated section from a Nintendo España / Spain press release:
From the collection of Super Smash Bros., now on sale, you can play with amiibo Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Luigi and Bowser. What have not you done with them and not find them anywhere? The March 20 comes a new collection of ad hoc amiibo made for Mario Party 10: Super Mario Collection, which includes new amiibo Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Bowser, Estela, Donkey Kong and Wario.
That’s still not a complete and total confirmation, since there’s a small possibility that the press release text is an error. We’ll let you know if we hear anything out of Nintendo of America/UK!
Takahashi would love to see an Xenoblade amiibo series
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 15 Comments
Tetsuya Takahashi posted a couple of additional tweets on the Japanese Xenoblade Chronicles X Twitter account today. However, rather than sharing more on the game, he instead spoke about another topic: amiibo.
Takahashi mentioned that he supervised the Shulk amiibo since its early prototype stages. He also expressed a desire for there to be an Xenoblade amiibo series in the future, though perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into it – at least not yet.
Below are Takahashi’s full comments:
It’s been about a month since I posted. The Shulk amiibo came out! I’ve been supervising this since the early prototype stages, but I’d like to say thanks to all the people who’ve worked very hard on the amiibo. I saw a production model at the start of this month and I was very impressed with the build quality. This time it’s a Smash Bros. figurine, but I’d love for there to be a Xenoblade [amiibo] series sometime in the future, too.
I know I’d buy a ton of Xenoblade amiibo. What about you folks?!
More: Amiibo, Tetsuya Takahashi
Satoru Iwata confirms port strike is reason for shipment woes in US
Posted on 10 years ago by Dennis Gagliardotto(@LyonHart_) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News | 18 Comments
A translation coming from Nintendo’s recent investor Q&A meeting shows the President of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, admitting that the port strike on the west coast of America has had an impact on shipments regarding amiibo and the New Nintendo 3DS XL.
This would explain the amount of delays, shortages and vague dates we’ve been getting since amiibo first launched alongside Super Smash Bros. for Wii U back on November 21st, 2014, which is the only time there’s been a solid date on an amiibo release in the US. Video games, on the other hand, haven’t been impacted in this strike, as “games are light and can be flown to America”, Iwata says.
Let’s just hope this doesn’t go on for much longer so both the consumers and Nintendo can go about amiibo and any future products stress free.
The Q&A meeting is currently available in Japanese here
More: Amiibo, Meeting, Satoru Iwata
Toys “R” Us to sell fan-made amiibo customizations on its website
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 12 Comments
Toys “R” Us is in talks to sell custom amiibo from creator “Evilos”. While the two sides are in the negotiating phases, everything is proceeding as planned and the fan-made figures will be sold online at some point. Pricing and other details are up in the air at the moment, but we’ll let you know more as soon as we receive more information.
GameStop – Ike amiibo pre-orders could be delayed until spring, King Dedede until summer; one per household for Ike
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments
Have you pre-ordered an Ike or King Dedede amiibo at GameStop? Then you’ll probably be interested in hearing the latest update from the retailer, via a memo obtained by Destructoid.
Those who reserved Ike before December 27 should have their orders fulfilled within the next week or so. However, all reservations that came after won’t be completed until spring. Ike is also being limited to one per household.
The situation is similar with King Dedede. If you got your pre-order in before December 31, expect the figure to arrive soon. Unfortunately, all other orders won’t be fulfilled until summer.
Mega Man and Sonic are safe at least. GameStop says that these two figures will reach all consumers in one wave, unlike Ike and King Dedede.
Rumor: West coast port strike impacting Nintendo’s supply
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, New Nintendo 3DS, Rumors | 5 Comments
Nintendo stock in North America as of late has become a bit ridiculous as of late. Finding amiibo, New 3DS XL systems, and other products in stores has been far from easy.
Whatever’s going on could partially be attributed to the port strike happening on the west coast, which has been taking place for several months. 70 percent of goods coming from Asia have been affected, Reuters says. Nintendo hardware and amiibo come from China, and ships tend to head to the west coast since it’s the shortest route. That happens to be where the strike is happening.
Nintendo hasn’t commented on whether the port strike has impacted them. However, Kotaku writes that it has heard from people at the company that supply of amiibo and New 3DS systems have been affected.
More: Amiibo
Video: A look at the Mega Man amiibo
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos | 0 comments
More: Amiibo
Walmart to sell gold Mario amiibo
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 26 Comments
Well, this is certainly a huge deal. We now have confirmation that Nintendo is bringing the gold Mario to retail, and it will be a Walmart exclusive. That’s based on some promotional material found from the retailer.
News about a gold Mario amiibo first leaked out earlier this month. The same leak suggested that a silver Mario amiibo will be available at some point as well.
Iwata’s full comments on NES/SNES amiibo trials, amiibo cards, 3DS compatibility
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News, Wii U | 9 Comments
In contrast to the current figure-shaped amiibo available, we will make amiibo in the form of cards this year as one of our future plans as Mr. Miyamoto mentioned at the Corporate Management Policy Briefing in October.
We are also planning a free-download app for Wii U in which you can enjoy NES and Super NES games with your amiibo in the first half of this year.
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.
Even though only Wii U has been compatible with amiibo so far, we are making steady progress on compatibility with the Nintendo 3DS platform. New Nintendo 3DS is equipped with NFC as a standard feature. For existing Nintendo 3DS systems, we will release an external NFC reader/writer in summer this year. On the software side, “Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS” started to support amiibo after a software update in February.
Iwata on amiibo success and sales
Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 3 Comments
We also launched amiibo, our new category of products, at the same time as “Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.”
We had already shipped 5.7 million units worldwide by the end of last year.
amiibo is performing especially well in the U.S., Canada and Australia. Some figures are sold out and are being sold at online auctions at premium prices – something which none of us had predicted.I can say that amiibo has kicked off smoothly, as it is a brand-new product category, launched with a much lower recognition rate than other action figure related proposals from other companies.
First of all, amiibo is a series of “game-connectable figures” supported by multiple titles.
“Super Smash Bros.” was the first title to support amiibo, followed by “Mario Kart 8,” “Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker,” and “Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.” We are planning further compatibility in various software titles.
amiibo is offered at a more affordable price range than packaged game titles, so consumers may feel the hurdle has been lowered to buy them one by one without seasonal gaps. In fact, considering the recent sales, amiibo has shown a smaller decline after the year-end sales season in various markets in the world than packaged titles. Also, I think amiibo can contribute to maintaining active use rates of Nintendo platforms by periodically bringing fresh topics to the applicable software through releases of new amiibo figures.
The first amiibo series after “Super Smash Bros.” will be “Super Mario,” which is compatible with “Mario Party 10.”
We are going to add various changes to the appearances of amiibo store shelves including the “Super Smash Bros.” series. As store shelf space is limited, some amiibo may become standard models while others may be replaced once they sell out.
If this is possible, amiibo will maintain a constant presence in stores, which will be beneficial for all Nintendo platforms.This is a pie chart indicating the regional shipment breakdown of amiibo from its launch until the sixth week of this calendar year.
As you can see at a glance, the sector in red representing the U.S. and Canada accounts for a significant portion: 63 percent. The sell-through proportion of the total shipment is approximately 70 percent in each of Japan, U.S. and Canada, and Europe while it reaches 90 percent in Australia.This is the regional top sales ranking chart of each amiibo figure. This does not perfectly represent the popularity or demand for each character because some amiibo were out-of-stock in some regions, but you can certainly see some regional differences in the sales trends.
This chart shows the amiibo figures with a high retail sell-through rate in each region. Some of the amiibo listed here are already sold out and are now difficult to obtain.
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.
