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

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: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: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.