Does Amiibo Matter Anymore?

by Doc – Owner, Founder, Not a Doctor Without Amiibo

I hate to be a doom and gloom kind of guy when it comes to Amiibo, because it’s felt like ever since the beginning, that amiibo has perpetually been on the edge of being canceled by Nintendo. I don’t think you could blame me for this attitude – I grew up in the GameCube and Wii era where Pikmin 3 was promised for 10 years straight, Miiverse was suddenly cancelled, Animal Crossing New Leaf was delayed over and over, and great Nintendo projects seemed to be getting memory holed left and right. It seemed logical to conclude for that entire duration that this odd little hardware accessory was going to be shut down by Nintendo after the Smash 4 line concluded, and then after the Breath of the Wild line, and then after the Animal Crossing line, and then after the end of the Switch… You get the idea.

In retrospect, it seems like amiibo has had a minor resurgence about every two years, sometimes 3 years on the longer end, and successfully spanned the 3DS, Wii U, Switch and soon to be Switch 2 eras. So fears of cancellation probably aren’t founded anymore.

I’ll ask a different question, though: does Amiibo matter anymore? When amiibo first launched, they were $13 a piece. Affordable, but not cheap. When the Switch came out, they were $16 a piece. That price hike was pretty understandable, considering the pace of inflation and the improved quality of materials pretty well justified the price hike. I don’t remember hearing anyone complain about the price of Amiibo at the time. Nobody purchased them for their functionality, either, so we didn’t have to worry about buying them for use in the games we liked. We bought them because we liked them, and we liked them because they were the kind of merchandise we’d always wanted from Nintendo.

We’re not there anymore. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but $30, $40, sometimes $50 for one single amiibo is absurd! The underlying hardware in the chip system is cheap – unless they have changed how they work for the Switch 2, it’s still just an NTAG215 chip. Back in the day, the chips were about 25 cents from China. Now they seem to run you about 70 cents. Still, they’re not expensive. One could try to justify this price by arguing that the now-actuated threats of tariffs combined with the severe inflation from the beginning of the Switch era could explain some of the prices. I’m not saying that’s not a valid argument, because from a business perspective it might very well be.

As best as I can tell, the amiibo market is in a supply glut. I spent 4 years in college studying this thing, so let me tell you – If there is a supply glut, there is either overproduction of the commodity, or overpricing of the commodity. I’m thinking it’s overpricing. Nobody is looking at these figures and concluding that they’re worth $30, let alone $50 like the Kirby ones now are. When I go to game stores and department stores that sell games, I see amiibo crammed onto the shelf that have been available for sale for 6 months. When I check online, there are no supply outages. I realize it’s an absurd thing for a collector’s hobby to say, saying that not having supply outages is a bad thing, but in the case of amiibo that’s actually true! We’re so used to receiving slightly less than the actual demand for an amiibo that one must wonder if the supply glut isn’t caused by a simple lack of interest in the consumer.

I won’t lie. I have not purchased an amiibo from the Switch 2 era. I likely won’t. To be honest, unless Smash 6 comes out and features Amiibo training at an affordable price, I can’t picture myself buying an amiibo ever again, at least not unless prices go down or I make a significantly larger amount of money than I do now. They’re just too expensive! I’m the Amiibo Doctor, and even I won’t participate in this anymore.

I doubt that I’m alone in this. Which means I must now ask you: do you think amiibo matters anymore? Leave a comment, and let me know.