by Doc – Owner, Founder, Rather Surprised Amiibo Tech Still Going
I’ve been with amiibo since the beginning, and over the years I’ve watched several different pieces of “amiibo tech” come and go. “Amiibo tech” is a term I coined, and it’s basically a small gadget, gizmo or thingy that functions as an amiibo using your legally obtained amiibo bin files (never mind that it’s not clear in the USA whether software emulation is illegal, let alone hardware emulation). The first one was the amiiqo, which was eventually replaced by the Powersaves for Amiibo (still the best option for many users) and then by a whole host of options in the Switch era including the totally awesome Amiibo Flask. (Oh, and this whole time there’s been a cottage industry of Etsy sellers writing their own amiibo chips and selling them online as third party amiibo cards).
Now there’s simply too many to keep track of. I’m not a Redditor by any stretch of the imagination, but I logged in to check my inbox and this post was recommended to me. It’s a new piece of amiibo tech that I’ve never seen before. Odd.
After having done some digging, there’s a lot of new amiibo tech I’ve never seen before. This is pretty surprising, considering that I’ve only had Amiibo Doctor on the back burner for about a few months to focus on other projects and life priorities. Typically when new amiibo tech shows up, I’m the first one to know about it (because the manufacturer wants to market it to an amiibo fanbase). Seeing all this new amiibo tech is somewhat exciting, but it raises a concern for amiibo fans.
Nintendo’s Competing With Its Fans
With the Switch 2 on the horizon with a leaked date of September 2024, it’s not clear to me what Nintendo’s amiibo strategy is in the long run. I figure the Switch 2 will have some form of amiibo compatibility with it, even if it’s not in the hardware form factor. We also know with basic observation that Nintendo tends to ship amiibo only alongside games that will move units, so we can conclude there’s a profit motivation behind the plans for amiibo.
But with all of this amiibo tech going around, one has to ask: is Nintendo missing out on its own monopoly?
Yeah, probably. The demand for amiibo tech seems to suddenly be astronomically high compared to where it was even two years ago. Everyone and his mother wants access to amiibo but can’t afford the figures, or possibly even the cards. Nintendo’s only “competing” product is its own amiibo figures, but with each new amiibo release comes more interest in amiibo tech from people who can’t find or can’t afford the figures they want to use.
The situation is laughable in many ways. Nintendo is the creator, sole supplier and producer of demand for the amiibo market. If Nintendo stopped making new amiibo or new amiibo-compatible games, supply and demand for amiibo would dry up and die with the interest in the first Switch. Yet Nintendo is losing in its own market to fans who are better at distributing the functions of amiibo than Nintendo itself.
If Nintendo were to solve this problem, they’d probably solve it by pointing their high-priced lawyers at anyone they can catch dabbling in amiibo tech. Nintendo has a great track record of going after its own fans, after all. Nintendo’s own litigious behavior is why I haven’t personally purchased a new Nintendo product in over a year (the last one I bought was the Steve and Alex amiibo on release day), instead only buying secondhand Nintendo items to prevent financially supporting the company. Frankly, it killed my interest in Nintendo entirely save for the Pokemon franchise.
But lawsuits and threats aren’t how they should solve this problem.
How Can Nintendo Solve It Nicely?
To recapture its market, Nintendo needs to lower the barrier to participating in amiibo collecting and usage as a hobby. They can do this through a few mutually-inclusive ways:
- Change the form factor of amiibo (to trading cards with chips, perhaps?)
- Rereleasing old amiibo en masse
- Modifying NSO so one can scan an amiibo with their phone’s NFC to permanently use that amiibo on that NSO account
- Directly producing an “amiibo emulator” like the amiibo tech that is emerging
All of these are good options, and the first and last one would probably be the most profitable. Nintendo could, with the levels of QA employed by The Pokemon Company International’s card printing subsidiaries, turn on its Pokemon card printing presses to put out trading card packs of amiibo cards that contain the chips of Nintendo characters, images of the characters, and a short Pokedex-like description of the character. They could sell it everywhere that Pokemon cards are sold, and for similar prices.
Ultimately, this all hinges on how Nintendo wants to pivot after the astronomical success of the Switch. If it wants to keep its amiibo brand alive then pivoting amiibo might also be a worthwhile endeavor.
Amiibo Doctor 