Gamers’ insatiable demand for Amiibo crashes GameStop’s site
Yesterday’s Nintendo Direct included announcements for new Amiibo that would be hitting store shelves later this year, and droves of gamers immediately swarmed over GameStop’s website as they tried to pre-order the highly collectible figures. The unexpected surge of traffic led to technical difficulties on GameStop’s side, and the Dallas-based game seller has opted to cease offering online pre-orders for the time being.
“Due to very strong demand for the newest wave of Nintendo’s Amiibo figures, GameStop is experiencing some technical issues with our website,” the company said on its Facebook page. “At this time, we are accepting pre-orders of Amiibo in stores only while we resolve these issues.”
Nintendo’s Amiibo figures have been a huge success since they were first introduced in June 2014, and some of the high-demand characters have been difficult to find in the U.S. due to a short supply resulting from issues with the labor troubles with West Coast shipping unions. Some of the most sought after Amiibo figures, including a few that have been discontinued, even sell for over $100 on eBay.
The demand for Amiibo is about more than plastic figurines of Nintendo characters. The small collectibles use the same NFC technology used in some smartphones to access exclusive content within related games. During yesterday’s Nintendo Direct video, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata also announced that the figures would be getting their own game…sort of.
Amiibo Tap: Nintendo’s Greatest Bits will be a free downloadable title for Wii U that will allow players to tap their Amiibo figures on the Wii U gamepad to unlock short snippets of gameplay from classic NES and Super NES games like Super Mario World, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. The scenes that are unlocked by each Amiibo are not predetermined, but rather they are randomly selected when the Amiibo is first tapped to the gamepad. That scene then becomes locked in to that scene.
“So in that way, it’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get,” Iwata joked. “There will be many classics to sample, so try scanning different Amiibo. It’s sort of like swapping game cartridges on an old NES or Super NES.”
Image credit: GameStop (c)
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