Yacht Club on the Shovel Knight amiibo’s origins, Nintendo on third-party figures
Game Informer has new quotes up from Yacht Club Games’ Sean Velasco and Nintendo’s Damon Baker. Between the two, we learn about how the Shovel Knight amiibo came to be (including how Miyamoto said “no” to one of the pitch documents), third-party amiibo in general, and more.
Continue on below for a roundup of Velasco and Baker’s comments. The original interview is located here.
Velasco on the Shovel Knight amiibo’s origins…
“We went over the entire range of possibilities of what we could do and what was going too far, what wasn’t going far enough, what does the Amiibo do, how does it work together. It was definitely a process. I heard that Mr. Miyamoto read one of my pitch documents and said, ‘No’ and that’s like the greatest honor of my life.”
“We went back and forth a lot. There was a lot of talk about how it was going to be, because Nintendo is so protective of their IP, but we managed to kind of navigate everything and now we’ve actually got it to come out.”
Baker on how Nintendo tried avoiding something similar to the PlayStation/Xbox-exclusive bosses…
“When we looked at the Amiibo functionality with Yacht Club, I think there was interest from all parties not to do a ‘me too’ type of product. We wanted to do something that was unique to Nintendo platforms that only we can do. I think that the announcements that the other consoles made, and the relationship that they have with Yacht Club is great, and they offered what they could offer in terms of IP from some of their iconic franchises, but the one really thing that we could offer is Amiibo integration, and that’s something that nobody else has and nobody else will be able to emulate.”
Baker on how Nintendo has been receiving proposals since the initial announcement of amiibo at E3 2014…
“There’s a lot of interest and certainly the sell-through numbers of those Amiibo are very attractive to our partners as well. I think what we’ll always evaluate is what is the end result of that and how does it create a positive gameplay experience for our fans and for our customers and consumers.”
Baker on how Nintendo will only strike more deals with third-parties for amiibo carefully…
“We don’t want it to be exploitative. We don’t want to just throw stuff out there in order to just sell it. I think that we’re very much looking at how does this improve or increase the gameplay experience and how does that story make sense in the grand scheme of things. So that’s what we’re going to always evaluate. It’s the reason why we collaborated with Activision with Skylanders; because it made sense for their franchise and there was a cross-promotional message with Amiibo in there in terms of the technology as well. It just made a ton of sense. We’ll continue to look at third-party opportunities with Amiibo and evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.”
On what the amiibo move means for indies…
“It’s huge for us. I feel like it just legitimizes us in the face of the world for Nintendo to kind of give us this honor of being the first third-party Amiibo. It’s incredible. As far as what it means for other indies, who knows? I don’t know what Nintendo’s planning, but I do know that in the beginning of the Wii U when we first came on there, when we had success, we were quick to help trumpet their message that the Wii U is cool and the 3DS is awesome and small companies can make really great games and people will notice and Nintendo will notice and be really great about it. And they have.”
Velasco on how Nintendo has treated Yacht Club Games…
“Nintendo has been so good with us and helped push us. Regardless of what you think of indies or the ‘indie’ label or how I feel about being associated with that. It’s an incredible thing that they’ve done to sort of allow smaller companies to have their day in the spotlight. Back in the day, Nintendo was not nearly as forthcoming as they are now. I would say this is a really cool, incredible initiative for them.”
