What to do about Nintendo's Amiibos? For those who don't know, Amiibos are basically little figurines of Nintendo characters which you can buy and then use to interact with games on the Wii U. It's an obvious ripoff of Disney's Infinity franchise, though I don't necessarily care about that. Sony tried to copy off of Smash Bros too and quite frankly I'm all for having more fighting games in that unique style, so I didn't fault Sony for doing that either.
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| Nooooooooooooo! |
To be honest though, I never really liked the idea of Amiibos. It comes off as gimmicky and is ripe for abuse as a glorified locked content method. From the perspective of physically enhancing the gameplay, you can't really do much with the Amiibos beyond just slapping them on your controller and watching them transfer data, and from the perspective of virtually enhancing the gameplay, it comes off as just a way to lock content behind an arbitrary pay wall. I just don't see how it makes things more fun in any way meaningfully. The only reason I would find Amiibos worth the investment is not really for anything related to gaming, but because it would be cool to have little statuettes to decorate my room with. I would be much more inclined to be on board with these figures if they were just marketed as collectables and room decorations.
In spite of all this though, I have to say that if Nintendo absolutely must follow through with these figurines, they are otherwise handling them reasonably. The in-game enhancements so far have been minimalistic and don't make you feel like you're losing out on a huge chunk of content. Some critics have expressed disappointment that the Amiibos don't offer enough in-game content, but the way I see it, this is actually a good thing, because the more content that is locked behind an Amiibo, the more it feels like Nintendo is bullying consumers into buying them. It's the equivalent of day one or disc-locked DLC basically.
So as long as you buy these figurines with a collectable mindset and aren't expecting much out of them, I think the purchase is justified. Nintendo has been treading a fine line between harmless gimmick and marketing abuse, but thankfully so far they have been remaining steady and fair with the Amiibos. That could easily change in the future though.
