The Tech Problems Inside Nintendo's Amiibo Toys

An anonymous reader writes: Nintendo's line of amiibo figurines are coveted by fans and collectors, even scalpers and robbers, with some harder to come by models fetching high sums on auction sites. But as a new article points out, every model suffers from similar technical drawbacks when it comes to interacting with the Japanese games giant's Wii U and 3DS consoles: there is currently only one game for instance that uses the write function of each figure's NFC chip, rather than simply reading it. But if there were more, Nintendo would be faced with another problem: where to store the data for each, since amiibo can currently only store one title's data at a time. The company may be looking to solve some of these issues with its upcoming NX system, but will it be too little too late?

Comments

Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

So you're storing your data in a doll, and you have to buy a doll for each game you play? And people are still willing to pay above retail for these dolls? Sounds like Nintendo's happy with the current model to me, and somewhere PT Barnum is smiling.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[TheCastro1689]

Found this http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/...

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[Nyder]

So you're storing your data in a doll, and you have to buy a doll for each game you play? And people are still willing to pay above retail for these dolls? Sounds like Nintendo's happy with the current model to me, and somewhere PT Barnum is smiling.

You do understand that Nintendo doesn't more money of rare figures, the scalpers do. In fact, Nintendo is losing money by not making more of the "rare" ones available to buyers.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 2 games that currently use the NFC write feature. Super Smash Bros and Mario Party 10. That is why there are the SSB Series amiibo and the Super Mario Series amiibo. It is very clear that Nintendo's fix for this "problem" is to just release another series of amiibo.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amiiqo is actually kind of neat. The app needs a bit of work but this has helped in the scenario where my kid keeps on renaming my character on the real amiibo, but I can play as "my guy" on the amiiqo.

Other than for unlocks I don't see the point / utility in pirating amiibos. Mostly because on the amiiqo it is "work" to switch banks (you have to press a button to move to the next bank) so if you're trying to play 3 amiibos in smash you'd ahve to scan in the first one, press the button, scan in the next one, press the button, scan in the next one - and then when you were done have to press the button until you got back to the first one again and then save it, press the button and save, press the button and save. That system only really works if you have all your amiibos you're going to use in a row, and cycling back to the first one is almost a guess if you dont know how many you have stored. If the system had an indicator that told you which bank you were on or a way to set and retrieve a bank it might be more practical.

Also - amiibos are little statues of characters I have enjoyed playing as - I'd rather spend the $$$ and have plastic (junk) reminders of awesome games than to have a dumb puck.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[Noah Haders]

So you're storing your data in a doll, and you have to buy a doll for each game you play? And people are still willing to pay above retail for these dolls? Sounds like Nintendo's happy with the current model to me, and somewhere PT Barnum is smiling.

be that as it may, a sucker born every minute etc, but I absolutely must possess the Mario amiibo from Super Mario World, or else all the atoms in my body will disassociate from their molecular bonds and fly into the ether.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Nintendo doesn't more money of rare figures

This is the same effect as with Pokemon cards, and it's the same as baseball cards in past years. Collectors overvalue the "resale" value of their collectables, which makes them feel better about overbuying at retail prices. In other words, the rare [item] market makes additional money for [the original seller] because it increases the number of items sold (especially to the same person) - not necessarily because it increases the price of each item.

Does that make sense for you?

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, the dynamics of randomized mystery items don't apply here. A person will buy more randomized packs to get a particular rare card in a CCG, sure. But these aren't randomized. So you either: A) Buy the one you want, at retail. B) Don't buy it at all. C) Buy it second hand from someone who guessed that demand would outstrip supply.

In this case, one amiibo isn't a stand-in replacement for another, because of the lack of randomization. I'm not going to buy a Mario because Marth is unavailable, if I don't care about Mario.

Yes, there is some amount of additional demand placed on the supply, *because* the supply is basically finite to a region. Although scalpers and collectors can profit off this arrangement, by setting the supply to be fixed, Nintendo also sets their revenue to basically be fixed on figures that will be in higher demand than they project. And it doesn't really help Nintendo if the original demand was always going to outstrip supply (which has been the case a few times now), because some side character is a fan favorite, because they aren't able to take advantage of the scalpers and collectors to boost the sales beyond what they would have gotten by just selling it normally.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[dissy]

So you're storing your data in a doll, and you have to buy a doll for each game you play? And people are still willing to pay above retail for these dolls? Sounds like Nintendo's happy with the current model to me, and somewhere PT Barnum is smiling.

It's worse than that.

Many games now contain features or characters that you can only unlock by swiping the matching character Amibo.
Swipe the Mario Amibo and you unlock that skin or hat or track or whatever, swap the Link Amibo instead and you unlock a Zelda themed skin or track or whatever.

The Amibo read function is basically used as DLC. DLC the store can run out of... But anyway

So many people collect an entire themed set of Amibos to play each of the different unlockable DLCs in a given game.

Combined with the write function that is only underutilized for the moment (two games support it, not one as the summary states) you go from simple addition into multiplication.

DLC that they can run out of, plus only enough on-the-go storage for one games save data.

It's obviously going to be a win-win! *depressed sigh*

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[thegarbz]

How is this any different from DLC or expansion packs?

Except that it's a little figurine that you can display, collect, and trade.

Re:Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling

[Anonymous Coward]

Its actually better for the consumer in a lot of cases if they are kids. Instead of having money you have to swipe a toy once to unlock something in the game or use it in the game. For mario kart unlocks you didn't need to use the amiibo more than once, so you could just have a friend come over, swipe his and you'd have the content. Pretty awesome if you ask me - its like the next level of "oh wow, you have super mario 3, you should come to my house and play it". For the kirby game swiping certain amiibos gave you a a bonus for that run - so being the kid with a king dedede has made you a "must invite" person for after school if you're still playing through.

 

The KISS principle

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth bearing in mind that - collectors notwithstanding - Nintendo's main market for these toys is small children for whom banking the "personality" of a toy character in some abstract data-space is probably a cognitive load too far. Keeping things as simple as possible isn't a bug, it's a feature.

If you want to store and reload character properties, there's a medium for that. It's called a memory card.

Re:The KISS principle

[TheCastro1689]

You get special attributes, but it seems that with games like Mario Party or Smash Bros you can save those upgrades to your character and take it on the road to a friends. But for most games they only use the read feature to give a slight boost to your character or unlock a level, etc.

One game, one save

[Calydor]

So let me get this straight.

Only one game currently uses the write function. The chip can only HOLD data for one game. And the whole problem boils down to, "But what if someone in some indeterminate future decides to use the write function as well?"

While yes, they should have thought of that during development, this currently seems kind of like a non-issue. And wouldn't the simplest solution be using the normal save space on the Wii U (I assume it has that, right?) requiring something similar to an encryption key or password from the given doll to use the data that applies to it?

Re: One game, one save

[Fwipp]

One of the bonuses of saving the info on the amiibo is that you can bring it to your friend's and use it there.

Re: One game, one save

[i.r.id10t]

And from a marketing stand point, needing to buy a new doll for each game that uses the features is just bonus sales...

Re:One game, one save

[Barny]

Take them a step further. Stuff a UUID in each doll, have the console 'sign in' to their online service using the UUID and store the data there. Then it will look just like the data is stored in the doll.

Now, I assume that each and every doll doesn't have a UUID in it. Simple, use that 'single save game' of data you can upload to put one in and link it to your account. That way, multiple dolls could link to the same account and saves.

Re: One game, one save

[DarkOx]

So the painful obvious answer is just write some unique user id onto the doll like GUID. You could even store it in some field of the data structure used by the existing game (hopefully) so you don't break that. All other titles just use some web services to store data and the GUID as a key to identify the specific doll.

Pretty much all of these console are connected to the Internet now so I don't see this being a problem.

Re: One game, one save

[citizenr]

if only there was some way of linking computers remotely, some kind of a net of cables ...
or maybe we could plug something, something with permanent storage, some kind of memory, we could call it a memory card

Re:One game, one save

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a pretty good solution, though you'd have to pair the ID with a password, or people could mess with each other's data by guessing IDs. I don't know how connected the Wii generally is since I haven't touched mine since the week I bought it. If most people are connected your idea will work, but ditching the dolls completely seems like a better idea.

Re:One game, one save

[diamondmagic]

This isn't always available or desirable.

For instance in Smash Bros., you can fight against your amiibo to give it experience and it'll pick up on your play style. This data is saved back to the NFID chip and can be brought to amiibo tournaments to see whose is the best, which play styles tend to defeat which play styles, etc.

It is quite interesting to see it all in action.

(And good grief, you wouldn't call your D&D minis "dolls" would you? Same thing.)

Re: One game, one save

[Anonymous Coward]

A UUID is 128 bits. Good luck guessing the correct value.

Re: One game, one save

[Anonymous Coward]

Would still work with a UUID in the Amiboo and the actual data stored "in the cloud".

Re: One game, one save

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

You don't have to guess the correct value. Just write a script to mess all 340 282 366 920 938 463 463 374 607 431 768 211 455 accounts.

Re: One game, one save

[diamondmagic]

How do you get to "the cloud" at a tournament with no Internet access, again?

Re: One game, one save

[Zaatxe]

One of the bonuses of saving the info on the amiibo is that you can bring it to your friend's and use it there.

Have you heard about this new thing called "Internet"? It is great! It can be used to transfer data between computing equipments all around the world!
More seriously now, XBox Live has this. I once went to a friend's house and logged my account in his console and was able to recover my on-cloud data (some games allow you to save on the cloud storage). The Amiibo doll could function as a loging key.

Re:One game, one save

[Barny]

I don't have any (mainly play pathfind via roll20) but yes I would call them dolls, the same as my (packed up and not touched for a long time) warhammer 40k dolls :)

Re: One game, one save

[Ash-Fox]

How do you get to "the cloud" at a tournament with no Internet access, again?

Pre-cache contestants in advanced.

What?!?

[robi5]

> there is currently only one game for instance that uses the write function of each figure's NFC chip, rather than simply reading it.

I guess it means:

There's only one game that stores data in the doll, the rest just read from it.

Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find amusing about these types of stories is that it flies in the face of what most slashdotters think about "AI" and the "singularity". According to technologists, AI and the Singularity is "just around the corner" and computers are "getting smarter every year". Yet we still can't produce basic systems that function. We can't even produce automobile electronics that are safe. We have OSX exploits on running systems that can give you root in one CLI command.

AI isn't going to happen. We can't even get the BASICS right.

Re:Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the bottom of the barrel to explain why the top minds of humanity will never achieve something is like saying we should all still be dying of smallpox because there are people too stupid to understand vaccines, that cars could never have been built because some people are unable to even drive one without killing themselves let alone build one, that social progress is impossible because there are people that still believe in a distorted, fundamentalist world view from a book... not commenting about the AI topic itself which is a contentious one, but your reasoning is flawed.

Re:Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are missing the point. The point is that the implementation of AI is so complex that even the "top minds" (whatever they are) cannot achieve it. The "top minds" are not working in AI either. They are working for Apple. For Facebook. For VMWare. On Linux. Because that is where the money is. The day of one or two people achieving some breakthough in technology is long gone anyway. Big, breakthough things get built by teams of people. People like the people who created OSX and cannot even achieve a system secured against a one line exploit. Surely you cannot claim that OSX engineers are all incompetant, but they look that way when designing a semi-complex system like an OS. Imagine how much more complex a AI system is.

There is more evidence of my stance than yours. After all there has been zero progress towards "true AI" in the last 40 years. Even if the "top minds" in CS were working on AI, the progress would be the same: zero.

Re: Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't follow your anti corporate argument. What do you think Siri is? You have to build the pieces before you can build the whole. Our brains would be nothing without the tongues to form words, eyes to see, ears to hear. Someone has to build the speakers, the object recognition, the voice recognition, etc and great advancements have been made in recent years.

I can wave at my XBox One and have it recognize me separate from my son, and shut it off with my voice when he wont go to bed. My house knows when I'm there thanks to GPS tracking in the phone, and controls what the temperature should be. I can say "capture" at my Galaxy camera and it takes a picture, auto focusing on faces if I want it to. None of these things "think", but they do "guess" very well. They can follow a script, but when that script gets sufficiently large, with branches and options based on probabilistic outcomes, how different will that be from a child?

Re:Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

I sense that you are a non-programmer. It's trivially common to have a brilliantly engineered product with a massive flaw because the best programmers are not working on simple UI elements - they're working on the kernel.
 
The problems of AI are not really at implementation stage right now - they require scientific and mathematical breakthroughs for there to be a big leap forward - if it follows the current 'simulate by brute force' approach then we'll still see it because you can achieve a lot when you allow for thousands of years.
 
Honestly, your stance is fatalist and no, I definitely have more 'evidence' for my position than yours - history is littered with a handful of bright minds doing crazy crap and solving problems, and 100,000 more for every one of those still working out how their penises work.

Re: Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not anti-corporate. I'm merely saying that AI is not around the corner. What you are describing isn't even close to AI. But you are amusing that you think the XBox One is a precursor to true AI. I guess that is how far down the readership has fallen here.

Re:Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

You made my point: you can have a brilliantly engineered product with massive flaws. And that is for SIMPLE systems. Imagine how complex a AI system would need to be. Perhaps a million times the complexity of OSX or the Linux kernel. I know: I am a programmer. I know how complex systems can get very quickly.

And no, there is no one "bright mind" that is going to "discover" AI. That isn't how it works. No one person "discovers" and builds a complex system by themselves.

You see this every day: comparatively simple computer systems that fail regularly despite hundreds millions of dollars and thousands of man hours invested in the effort.

Surely each Amiibo has a unique id?

[Anonymous Coward]

Store data in some internet/cloud/whatever place keyed to the unique id?

Obviously a problem for devices without network connections though.

How much data storage?

[AmiMoJo]

TFS doesn't mention how much storage these things have. NFC is just a transport layer protocol like ethernet or wifi, and the only limit to the amount of data it can transfer is down to the relatively low transfer speed. Since memory is really cheap these days each toy could easily contain a few kilobytes of storage, enough for multiple games to save some data.

All Nintendo needs is an API to manage it, which is hardly difficult to implement. What's the actual problem here?

Re:How much data storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few KB?

Damn it man, we aren't in the early years of solid state storage.
You could trivially hold a gig at the least and still be stupidly cheap.

Hell, I'd go as far as saying it takes more effort TO ONLY hold a few KB or whatever it is there are holding.

Re:How much data storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be using commodity NFC chips which typically come with ~144 bytes of user-writable memory and cost cents each. For 99% of NFC applications this is more than enough, and Nintendo would be idiots to try and roll their own silicone for the sake of a few extra bytes of memory.

Re:How much data storage?

[Yosho]

The hardware in the Amiibo have 4 kB of writeable space, which is almost inconceivably tiny nowadays. You could fit enough data in there for a couple of games if you're using minimal, tightly-packed C structures, but nobody does that any more when every game console has enough space that you can use dozens or even hundred of kB for storing saved games.

To be fair, I really don't know why they couldn't have just put a whole MB of storage space on the chip and then allocated something like 4 kB per game. Sometimes Nintendo makes baffling hardware decisions.

Re: How much data storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do that when you can sell 256 amiibos for that 1mb of storage.

This is like old style text messaging costs!

Re:How much data storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hardware in the Amiibo have 4 kB of writeable space, which is almost inconceivably tiny nowadays. You could fit enough data in there for a couple of games if you're using minimal, tightly-packed C structures, but nobody does that any more when every game console has enough space that you can use dozens or even hundred of kB for storing saved games.

To be fair, I really don't know why they couldn't have just put a whole MB of storage space on the chip and then allocated something like 4 kB per game. Sometimes Nintendo makes baffling hardware decisions.

*cough* Rumble Pack *cough* Especially when we've had memory cards (and sd adapters) for consoles for the last few generations.
 
Perhaps its just the fact the NFC chip they used is a dirt cheap all in one solution. Not to mention read time for larger data?

Re:How much data storage?

[AmiMoJo]

4KB is plenty. All you really need is a couple of identifiers, and maybe a tiny bit of actual data. The rest you can store in the cloud or as the seed to a PRNG etc.

I work in the embedded world where 4k EEPROM is not uncommon. It's plenty of space, roomy in fact, for quite a lot of useful data structures.

Re:How much data storage?

[viking099]

Nintendo would be idiots to try and roll their own silicone for the sake of a few extra bytes of memory.

Yeah, but I've seen loads of nerds who would happily roll their own silicone for a few bites of mammary!

Re:How much data storage?

[Yosho]

The rest you can store in the cloud

Which only works if you're on a system that has reliable internet access and your user is capable of setting up some sort of account credentials and is willing to go through that process any time they're playing a game on a different system. Remember who the target audience is here (young chlidren).

It's plenty of space, roomy in fact, for quite a lot of useful data structures.

For an embedded programmer, sure. Most of the people making console games nowadays have no experience programming for a system that doesn't effectively have as much storage space as they could want. Out in the non-embedded world, I've got preference files for text editors that are larger than 4k. I've seen save game files that are dozens of megabytes.

Re:How much data storage?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Even back on the Xbox, there were games that 'saved' by just dumping memory to a file.

Really? Seems simple to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just release Amiibo 2.0.
Make it incompatible with the 1.0 version to force everybody to re-buy them all.

guys i have bad news.

[nimbius]

If you're just now coming to realize the incredible inconvenience to consumers that planned obsolescence affords, and its only recently become a concern when contextualized in the form of a plastic trinket, then things are only going to get worse when you hear about how the rest of the modern consumer electronics market works.

Re:guys i have bad news.

[nitehawk214]

And this has been the point of consoles since the 90's.

I am willing to bet a lot more people go back and replay NES and SNES games than N64 or GameCube. Something was lost in console gaming.

Re:guys i have bad news.

[thegarbz]

This has nothing to do with planned obsolescence and in fact Nintendo is one of the few companies that put a lot of effort into backwards compatibility.

This is DLC in physical form. If anything it should be praised as a step in the right direction rather than locking your purchase to some imaginary online service which may or may not exist in the future.

Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to sensationalize a non-issue. Ambiios are money in the bank chip or not.

Feature, not problem

[drinkypoo]

What makes you think this isn't by design? Nintendo accessories have always been expensive, even though Nintendo consoles have always been inexpensive. Even the N64 appeared to be a pretty good value, until you figured in the cost of the RDRAM expansion...

Re:Feature, not problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Which maybe half a dozen games used. And atleast one of those games was packaged with the thing.

Re:Feature, not problem

[drinkypoo]

Which maybe half a dozen games used. And atleast one of those games was packaged with the thing.

Yeah, what was that, DK country? That's how I remember it, but my memory is as fallible as the next guy's, and probably moreso. I was a pod racer fan at the time, I still think it was actually a pretty decent game, and it looked like dookie without the memory expansion to the point where it might as well have been required.

Yes, known problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo hasn't hidden this. It is a known "problem" that an Amiibo can hold only one title. Sucks, but there you go... more a design than technical problem.

Isn't news and customers don't care

[mrun4982]

Nintendo's made this clear before they even released them so it shouldn't be news to anybody who cares about them. Judging from how well these things sell, and the fact that so many people buy them with no intention of even using them in a game, the public doesn't really care about this limitation.

Who put the ishy in the washy?

[NotDrWho]

Nintendo, I remember them from the 80's and early 90's. Loved playing that little dago who jumped on turtles. Didn't Sony or Microsoft buy them out around the turn of the century?

Re:Who put the ishy in the washy?

[greysondn]

List of things Nintendo has accomplished:

- Reviving consumer faith and interest in home game consoles post-Atari Shock

- Providing definitive games for genres that are now "commonplace" and "relatively set in stone" - Platformers (Mario), Metroid half of Metroidvania, etc

- Always adding experimental features that often become de-facto standards: XABY controls, multi-screen interactions, casually approachable motion controls

- Daring to experiment with gaming hardware in an effort to move things forwards (goes with the previous.) A control stick in the middle of a controller? Okay, whatever. A pair of screens on a portable where one is a touch screen? Hey, if you say so. A game console that lets you waggle the controller with a point and click interface as easy as using a TV remote? Mmmkay. A game console with 3D graphics - the interfering "paralax" 3DS and the Virtualboy both here? Gimmicky, but a experimental move nonetheless. A game console that ships with a tablet as more-or-less part of the console, allowing you to treat the TV as "less relevant"? Brilliant, if a bit poorly executed. [...] While some of these are astounding failures and some are astounding successes to the point that it blindsided the industry, the bigger point is that Nintendo's experimentation serves as a source of disruption and innovation in the industry which is otherwise saturated with a LOT of the same stuff and little willingness to experiment with the medium itself. otherwise. (Remember that this point is about hardware, not software; indie studios are doing a lot to help disrupt things again on the software front. See also: "AAA Rut")

- Becoming an emblem not of "outstanding" or "hardcore" quality but of *consistent* quality. This is very important; I would rather have a game studio be consistent than release 5 lemons and one great game. (I'm looking at yooooou, Yuji Naka and Sonic Team, as well as whoever decided that the end of Halo 4 should be a poorly coded Starfox-esque flight sim.)

- Lest we forget, it was Nintendo's fault that Sony become a serious game hardware company. The PS2, if memory serves, has the highest number of games made for it and is quite possibly the most successful game platform to date (barring general home computers, of course). Yes, a lot of those games are weird or suck, but most people think of RPGs and a handful of unique shooters when they think PS2 anyway.

Re:Who put the ishy in the washy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they were pretty awesome back in the day. I wonder whatever happened to them?

NX will use Amiibos instead of optical for games.

[chewie2010]

Prediction: NX will use Amiibos instead of optical drive for games. At first it will unlock a download. In a few years all the games will come on Yoshii dolls.

More than one game already uses write

[Anonymous Coward]

Damien didn't do their research as Mario Party 10 also writes to the chips: http://www.nintendo.com/amiibo/compatibility and indeed you do overwrite the data: http://www.nintendo.com/amiibo/faq#how-many-games .

Obvious spam article is spammy

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nintendo's line of amiibo figurines are coveted by fans and collectors, even scalpers and robbers, with some harder to come by models fetching high sums on auction sites

Why is there an advertisement for a VERY niche product on /. ? This is as geeky as magnet video tricks on youtube. I guess this is news if one of the editors has an interest.

> The company may be looking to solve some of these issues with its upcoming NX system, but will it be too little too late?

Nothing says "I'm trying to mask the obvious product placement" like an open-ended question.

There are 2 games that use the Write Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 2 games that currently use the NFC write feature. Super Smash Bros and Mario Party 10. That is why there are the SSB Series amiibo and the Super Mario Series amiibo. It is very clear that Nintendo's fix for this "problem" is to just release another series of amiibo.

They simply don't care.

[nitehawk214]

Or they care just as much as Hasbro/WoTC cares about what you do with old Magic cards. Sell them, use them, keep them in a shoebox, set them on fire; they are just going to print more. Assuming nothing has changed in the last decade or so, cards from more than a few releases ago are not valid in tournaments. Planned obsolescence and whatnot.

Re:NX will use Amiibos instead of optical for game

[nitehawk214]

Prediction: NX will use Amiibos instead of optical drive for games. At first it will unlock a download. In a few years all the games will come on Yoshii dolls.

That makes no sense.

Which is why I think you are right. Flash media costs about nothing per gigabyte, now. Soon you can put several gigabytes into everything for the cost of the plastic to make the thing.

GURPS

[OrangeTide]

Seems like a pen and paper roleplaying game has the answer. the data could be a universal set of characters attributes and that progress could be translated in-game in various ways. if you level yourself on one game you might actually get some level of progress on another game. I'm a bit disappointed that this isn't how it works.

Awiiaboo? No thanks...

[Dogtanian]

On the flip side, there are less serious gamers like myself (*) who might consider the buying the 3DS, but would be put off by the fact that to access certain hidden features- or, more seriously, advantages- in games *that you'd already paid for*, you then had to shell out more for these figures which you have no interest in, nor space in your house for.

If some people like that- good for them. But personally, if I'm expected to buy into this sort of thing to get full use out of a 3DS, I'm not even going to bother.

Probably Nintendo have done their sums and research and estimated that they'll make more from tying their consoles to the Amiibo than they'll lose. Maybe they got those sums right, and maybe they didn't- but even if they did, it's possibly not the 100% win that you think it is.

(*) Or rather, people who are *only* interested in the games- casually or otherwise. There are probably many "serious" gamers who have no interest in collecting "Sailor Moon" Happy Meal toys with embedded RFIDs either.

The Problem?

[Weirsbaski]

The Amiibo's poor storage situation is the problem? I thought the real problem was that we have to buy Amiibo's to unlock game functionality, after buying the game itself. There's something messed up with needing a few hundred dollars worth of plastic just to get the advertised gameplay.

Re:The Problem?

[captjc]

Bull. There is not game that requires them nor do they give anything that is essential to gameplay itself. All they do is unlock unessential little bonuses like costumes and freebie items.