The Rise and Fall and Rise of Amiibo - Scott The Woz

hey y'all Scott here this game blows it could really use some plastic the idea of figurines with NFC chips inside of them transporting characters into games captured the hearts of children and thirty year olds everywhere this genre exploded in popularity and really hit its peak in my opinion around 2014 to 2015 nowadays however it's a bit of a different story we had four major players in the ring Skylanders which is opting out of an entry this year Disney infinity which was cancelled lego dimensions which is being quietly supported less and less and finally amiibo the only toys to life competitors still kicking that barely did anything the other games had you buying figures to play as characters in the respective titles amoeba basically says who likes costumes and cheap additions to games house people doing well enough to stay afloat 1 into beta Billy had the lamest in-game functionality of the bunch probably because these are characters engraved into the minds of collectors everywhere figures of them obviously would make a lot of people happy well it's been a rocky road for the toys to lifeline and the idea started in 2001 with the Nintendo e-reader this add-on for the Game Boy Advance allowed you to swipe cards to unlock games levels or what have you and select titles some of the more prominent games that used it included Animal Crossing and Super Mario advance for Super Mario Brothers 3 however it did a classic hard fail and just didn't catch on fast forward to 2013 where Nintendo finally unveiled their toys to live competitor some garbage Pokemon figures that were only obtainable in blind bags exclusively a game stop for using a garbage eShop game for the Wii U hey that must be the Pokemon Rumble you fan community again finally at e3 2014 Nintendo unveiled their line of toys to life figures named amiibo to be released alongside super smash brothers for Wii U I thought they look cool but I've never been much of a figurine guy so I just kind of shrugged it off listen I have a solid tree trunks worth of games in this room I think they speak for themselves in terms of what I enjoy I don't need posters or figurines to emphasize that and then smash brothers for Wii U came out I wasn't able to secure the gamecube controller bundle for the game so I had to resort to pre-ordering all the components separately the game the adapter the controller and I thought why not I got a Mario amiibo in that order - I thought it was a cool little figure and then it hit me so this is what overcompensation looks like amiibo is a toys to life platform of course these figures have NFC chips and their bases which allow for you to unlock certain things in compatible games either on Wii U 3d S or a Nintendo switch the idea behind amiibo that set it apart from the competition was that these figures can be used across multiple games on Nintendo platforms rather than just one specific game alas not all amiibo are compatible with every game that kind of makes everything feel a bit fragmented and makes some figures much more valuable than others when taking into consideration in-game functionality as somebody who doesn't care for figurines I like this match where there's maple because they were the same as the trophies in the game I thought that was so cool I had to get them all but also as somebody who doesn't care for figures I don't display these things these guys sit comfortably in an ottoman most of the time I mainly only collected the Smash Brothers series but of course I have a few others the yarn Yoshi amiibo are phenomenal however on second thought I only really needed one I never really needed all the colors I love the AAP 30th anniversary Mario amiibo it's so neat to see the pixel art from all sorts of different angles and the cool thing is it all lines up like this is exactly what ape and Mario would look like in the front they really thought this out I like the diversity in sizes and detail in the figurines I love ala Mars helmet the shiny material used for dr. Mario's pill Captain Falcon looks dead on for some reason I always really liked the greninja amiibo it's so cool to own a miniature Rob the robot and look at Bowser with his spikes you sure I'm definitely wouldn't stick him in my mouth we also have shovel knight the first third-party amiibo as in this wasn't made by Nintendo and because of that yeah definitely looks a bit cheaper than the others not knocking shovel knight super coolie is an amiibo it's just that you can obviously tell this wasn't first party nowadays I barely buy any more figures honestly I have the entire smash line except Meta Knight and Wii Fit trainer I have almost all the Nintendo characters in figure form I don't have an urge to run out and pick up a ton of more of these things which kind of blows because some of the more recent amiibo look pretty bangin I definitely felt the amiibo craze when the line launched and a decent amount of others did as well this venture for Nintendo experienced incredible popularity upon release but that came to a screeching halt later down the line and that was finally gaining a bit of a resurgence on November 21st 2014 alongside smash brothers for Wii U the first 12 amiibo were released people generally just bought the characters or figures they like but then masa serie kicked the door in people were starting to read Marthe villager and Wii Fit trainer were becoming very hard to find Nintendo confirmed these figures were the rarer of the bunch with rumors falling around they were discontinued as early as December 2014 which wasn't true people started to go crazy for these figures and ended up buying more and more amiibo since they were consistently going up in price on eBay and Amazon it's simply that thing where people go crazy for a product when they know it's impossible to find wave 2 came out in December of 2014 with six figures and they didn't even have a concrete release state here in North America it showed up when they showed up Little Mac Captain Falcon and Pitt were almost impossible to find other countries however didn't have nearly as big of an issue in terms of amiibo supply over here we suffered due to the West Coast port strike this meant import amiibo were becoming expensive as well but in some cases were a solid alternative to trying to find us amiibo in the wild wave 3 was one of the worst as it was basically like wave 2 with no concrete release dates but adding in retailer exclusive amiibo which definitely added to stock issues the first line of amiibo outside of the Smash Brothers series came out alongside Mario Party 10 that being the first wave of super Mario amiibo these figures were well stocked and incredibly easy to find with a slight exception being towed but an even bigger exception being the figure that made collectors go insane that was exclusive to Walmart gold Mario I always had a feeling that gold Mario was easier to find than say Schalk right but the fact that it was a special variant amiibo made this thing the apple of many collectors eyes way forth and came out alongside the release of splatoon which also got three amiibo of its own plus a companion figure to gold Mario Silver Mario this was what I believe amiibo hit its peak so many figures were released on the same day and on top of that there were more niche characters such as Robin lucena and nests when pre-orders for these figures went up game stops website crashed barely anybody got nest when the wave initially hit fans were still pretty mad at how amiibo were being handled but lucky for them their problem would soon be resolved but also it would take a lot of the fun out of amiibo collecting the next wave of Smash Brothers amiibo was a bid spread out to retailer exclusive amiibo dark pit and palutena came out in the summer while the rest of the wave came out all throughout September and this wave was incredibly easy to obtain it seemed like Nintendo finally got ahold of their stock problems in North America they actually restocked a bunch of rarer amiibo - it was finally possible to get a hold of shock Lucario I get cetera the retailer exclusivity for an amiibo broke off too which meant it was easy to walk into a store grab a shock amiibo and walk out maybe a little too easy Nintendo ramped up amiibo production tenfold when they saw the increasing demand for the product but the problem was the smash brothers line was dwindling in terms of characters they can make figures out of people were buying the other series of amiibo but it was the smash series that kept everybody there Nintendo needed a new line to keep people interested so they launched the Animal Crossing series to coincide with the releases of happy home designer and a ton of Animal Crossing amiibo were released and there was definitely stock possibly of the over variety there's a few things that went sour with amiibo in late 2015 Animal Crossing simply didn't have the mass appeal of the smash line now of course that's not to despair Animal Crossing as a popular franchise it's one of Nintendo's top series the thing is smash is a crossover featuring all of Nintendo's most beloved IP no matter who you were there was a figure in the Smash series you had some kind of connection to Animal Crossing simply didn't have that the only market there was for the Animal Crossing line where Animal Crossing fans and amiibo collectors Nintendo was pushing amiibo for games that Cheston and live up to their legacy chibi-robo zip lash was heavily marketed alongside a chibi-robo amiibo and this game blows happy home designer was relatively lackluster for most people as it felt more like Animal Crossing light rather than a completely separate spin-off and these were games that Nintendo made simply to sell figurines and they liked a lot of the heart and soul that was required to inspire people to go on by figures for these games I think it would have been better to have multiple series of amiibo coming out consistently rather than 70% Animal Crossing 30% other how about like for Animal Crossing figures come out alongside for Kirby figures for new Mario figures a new splatoon figure you know waves like that with more variety rather than basically nothing but Animal Crossing for half a year with some random figures like wolf link and Lucas being thrown in there overall I think this was the biggest problem with amiibo running from late 2015 to 2016 Nintendo simply made too many this took a lot of the fun out of collecting yeah you could finally pick up a gold Mario and most retailers for $12.99 but that takes a lot of the satisfaction and value out of finally getting one it took a lot of the urgency out of having to immediately pick up a figure because in due time these amiibo would be in the clearance bin there's no denying the stock problems Nintendo faced in the early days of amiibo word ridiculous and definitely anti-consumer but making them to readily of takes a lot of the fun out of collecting amiibo definitely took a hit in terms of consumer interest from 2015 to 2016 the smash brothers line basically consisted of trickling out figures of DLC characters Animal Crossing was still going hard for the first half of 2016 a curvy line came out in tandem with planet robobot News platoon figures a new wave of Mario figures that was basically it there was little reason to get people interested in the toy line and it seemed as if Nintendo was pumping the brakes on a meebo until a little game called birth of the wild came out when the Nintendo switch launched so did breath of the wild alongside a few amiibo for the game and these things sold out hard everybody was crazy for the game so these amiibo did really well however there weren't stock problems if you really wanted these figures you could pick them up no problem on release but anytime after that yeah they were sold out and really ever since then antenna hasn't seen a similar sales flop with a Meebo like they did with the Animal Crossing series even the fireable amiibo which definitely has a smaller audience than say the Zelda ones or even Animal Crossing didn't sit in clearance bins but we're relatively easy to find a week or so after release and if you want to get a hold of the Zelda amiibo then just wait it out because Nintendo has been doing steady yet conservative restocks it finally seems Nintendo has figured out how to properly stock amiibo there hasn't been a ton of headaches or stock problems with the toys to lifeline those trucks carry on with Nintendo's many consoles and there also hasn't been recent amiibo overflowing store shelves due to nobody buying them Nintendo has finally figured out the perfect amount of amiibo to send to stores and if they keep this up then amiibo is far from dead and wait did anybody else totally forget these things work with games yeah these suckers having game functionality that's nuts Smash Brothers is one of the best examples of amiibo support and that was the game these things launched with it was pretty neat to train my own little Pacman to fight just like I do most of the time the functionality is just oh you've got a random little item in the game oh you got a costume or oh you got a motor or likeable that should have been unlocked in the game after beating it rather than being forced B on an amiibo paywall as amiibo are starting to become popular again it seems like Nintendo is focusing less and less on ingame functionality and more so just making amiibo cool collectibles look at breath of a wild the amiibo just give you in-game items seems a bit like an afterthought in my opinion or when they revealed the pigment amiibo for hate Pikmin they basically shrugged it off in small text with the functionality of the amiibo was well if Nintendo wasn't interested in giving amiibo purpose I sure as all won't miss an opportunity to kill an afternoon and I'll do it myself so hi everybody and welcome to how many amiibo can I see in my mouth let's pick one at random here dammit [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Scott The Woz

Views: 1,652,238

Rating: 4.8967199 out of 5

Keywords: amiibo, unboxing, review, nintendo switch, nintendo 3ds, kirby, zelda, mario, Super Mario Odyssey

Id: vxD-XO4jjLc

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2017