Nintendo's Amiibo Fiasco
Origin of Amiibo
Boom! The doors open and everyone awaits a new amiibo. Now you’re probably wondering, what’s an amiibo? An amiibo is a little plastic figure that has an NFC chip inside that interacts with certain video games for the Wii U and 3DS. These little figures are sold at stores for cheap prices and are simple to find. These little figures don’t do something in every game, but in a few games, they give you DLC and more content for your games. One example of a game is Super Smash Brothers for Wii U and 3DS. There are different characters to find and there are still many to come. Nintendo has already sold 2.6 million of them!
What do they Cost?
So, you might be asking yourself, what’s the cost of these things? Well, an amiibo from a store like Walmart or Target costs about $13-$15. Those are normal prices. However, obviously rare ones are hardly at stores, so you’ll have to shop on Amazon or Ebay. You’re gonna need to put in a lot of extra efforts to get rares. Rares can cost up to $90! Like, seriously? I had to buy my rare for $33, which is still ridiculous comparing to the retail price. It doesn’t stop there either. If people find a defective amiibo that has something wrong with the character model, people sell them on Ebay for even more! Some have sold up to $25,100 and that’s just for a character with an extra or misplaced limb!
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Which ones are Hard to Find?
Quite a multitude of amiibos are rare. Three in particular seem to be Villager, Marth, and Wii Fit Trainer. Buying them all together costs about $100-$150, which is around $30-$50 per figure! So if you’re ever looking around and see them, you’ve just found yourself a gold mine! Anyways, it’s very unlikely that that will happen though, because when stores say that they have rare ones, they’ll be gone in minutes if you’re too slow. Unfortunately, some poor souls find rare ones in poor condition, such as the person who found a Little Mac in a stapled box.
Why Aren’t they in Stock?
Obviously, one reason is that Nintendo doesn’t make some of the rares anymore to keep demand high. Nintendo does this on purpose, and it makes people like me mad and it makes other people disappointed. This is why so many of them are rare. Not only that, but some people buy TONS of one figure at preorder just so other people can’t have them. For example, one guy bought 100 Rosalinas JUST because he hated the character and didn’t want other people to have her. That’s about $1300 not costing tax!
What does the rest of the World do?
Albeit one person buys a ton of them for themselves, they sell most of them online for ridiculous prices. And the sad thing is that they know that we’ll buy them. I mean, most of America will pay $70 for a piece of plastic just to say they have it. It’s rude when people take them all, as it makes everyone frantic. Most people aren’t able to get anywhere.
So in short, Nintendo needs to step up their game!