Why not Placiibo or CattleGrid?

This is not a paid advertisement or endorsement of any kind. Believe me, I could sure use a paid advertisement. This post was not written with any prior communication with the developer/s of these apps-I have no idea who they are.

by Doc

I get asked pretty often why I don’t advertise or explain the two most-used methods for amiibo card production on the iPhone platform. Here’s why I don’t have recommendations for CattleGrid or Placiibo on this website.

Let’s start with CattleGrid. To make a long story short, the developer of CattleGrid took the app off the App Store on a whim after an internet commenter called them a rude name. (Has he never worked retail before?) CattleGrid has no further development planned to my knowledge, and it’s inaccessible unless you already downloaded it several months ago. That one’s pretty straightforward.

Placiibo is a bit more complicated. Placiibo is technically a free download on the App Store, but you can only have two bin files on the app unless you pay a minimum of $5 inside the app. This effectively renders it a paid app to the average user. The current prescribed method, which is a tad more complicated, costs a total of $2. That’s a $3 savings – not much, but it makes a difference for countries that have difficulty paying in USD.

In addition, according to the app’s FAQ page, once you write a bin file to a chip, the app doesn’t allow any more bin files to be written to that chip. This is unusual for amiibo-writing apps. While the character can’t be changed, everything else can be infinitely rewritten on any other amiibo app. Why Placiibo would limit this functionality is uncertain, but it may also be poorly worded and have a separate meaning.

In contrast to these methods, NFC Tools is more complicated, but it’s also cheaper and the app itself is more familiar to users of the Android counterpart Tagmo, as well as experienced developers who’ve worked with writing apps before. NFC Tools also writes to the proper bin size, allowing its files to be useful both in N2 Elite setups and with other amiibo read/write apps.

If you’ve got the moolah to pay for the full version of Placiibo, sure, go for it. Just remember to keep more chips handy.

Ultimately, the best amiibo-writing softwares are still the Powersaves for Amiibo and Tagmo. If you’re confined to only using an iPhone, then make the best you can of it, but otherwise… don’t bother writing amiibo on the iPhone platform if you can help it.