Author Topic: Let's Talk Amiibo!  (Read 147582 times)

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Offline UncleBob

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #75 on: December 20, 2014, 05:17:28 PM »
I wonder - are amiibo region locked at all?  Because that'd be shitty. ;)

Evan - I hope your offer is open for others as well.  If there turns out to be some JPN exclusive, I might need your help. :)
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Offline ejamer

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #76 on: December 20, 2014, 05:25:50 PM »

I wonder - are amiibo region locked at all?  Because that'd be shitty. ;)
...


They aren't - that's already been tested.

Again, ejamer, I wish you lived in Japan, where these things are extremely well-stocked and I could pick one off the shelf for you.

Actually. I could probably send you one of whatever you want, if you'd be willing to cover the shipping price. I don't care about the figure's price, they're nine dollars and three cents here. Plus you could get some spiffy Japanese packaging if you're into that sort of thing.


Actually, despite being very vocal about my frustration above, I've strongly considered importing already.


There are a couple of websites that offer imports, and while their stock seems to fluctuate that might be the best option currently available. By the time you pay shipping and extra fees it's not cheap... but it's also not stupidly expensive. Plus I'm ok paying slightly inflated prices to importers (who, in my mind, actually offer a service) instead of buying from local scalpers.


At this point I'd want to wait for Shulk to come out though - he and Villager are the only two "must own" Amiibo figures for me, although there are about 8 others (Fire Emblem and Kirby character sets, plus a few others) that look interesting.


If you are serious about the offer, let me know. I'd get back to you after Shulk comes out (by which time we'll probably have a better idea if Villager etc are going to be restocked in North America). Would definitely pay full price plus shipping plus a tip for your time/effort.  Hahaha... but based on Uncle Bob's comment you might've already bitten off more than you can chew - or accidentally opened a side-business of sorts to pick up some drinking money.
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Offline Evan_B

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #77 on: December 21, 2014, 12:24:39 AM »
The offer is open for anyone. In the words of Shulk- I'm really feelin' the holiday spirit and I'll stand by my word in the months to come.

I'm well-aware of the crappy Gamestop Shulk situation and I'd be more than willing to nab some of the exclusives here. And I'm a toy owner, so I'll search for good paint applications and non-warped sculpts.
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Offline Triforce Hermit

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #78 on: December 21, 2014, 09:00:51 AM »
If I get screwed over by Gamestop, then I might need to take you up on that offer. I'm hoping that is not the case though and that everything goes smoothly though.
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Offline rlse9

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #79 on: December 21, 2014, 10:36:13 AM »
I find it kind of funny how people on the internet went from complaining that the quality of Amiibo was so poor that they weren't worth buying and that they're overpriced for what they are to complaining that they're selling out too quickly that they can't find them in stores.


Hmm... some people might have made those complaints.


Mine were more along the lines of:
(1) production models are significantly worse than display models, with some poor decisions (like Link's yellow stick) standing out as particularly unfortunate
(2) they are slightly overpriced, but that's not a huge surprise given the source
(3) distribution has been very poor and it's frustrating for anyone who doesn't want the main Nintendo mascots to be driven to an absolutely ridiculous scalper market to get the figures they want, while NoA and retailers make contradictory and unclear statements about whether specific figures will be reprinted/restocked


And which one of those complaints are wrong?   :confused;
None of those complaints are wrong, but the rhetoric across the internet in general, not anyone in particular here, seems to be a little more extreme than your reasonable complaints.

So why is everything well stocked in Japan and not here?  Are there retailer exclusives there or is that just a US thing?  Is it NoA being completely incompetent here and NoJ having a clue or is it retailers here being less willing to order stock and devote shelf space to something Wii U based?  I can kind of see retailers not wanting to have tons of of lesser known characters that they think they'll end up stuck with and Nintendo not wanting to have warehouses full of figures they can't get on store shelves, but after seeing the success they've had, it is kind of bizarre that they haven't said that they're going to produce more of something that people clearly want.

Offline pokepal148

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #80 on: December 21, 2014, 11:45:57 AM »
Link's amiibo got horribly borked in design. Based on the pictures I've seen his head is like drooped down or something, what the heck.

although i'd rather get toon link anyways since he has better customs in SMASH, and maybe captain falcon AND-OH GOD, WHAT HAVE I BECOME!

Offline ejamer

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #81 on: December 21, 2014, 05:06:53 PM »
...
Is it NoA being completely incompetent here and NoJ having a clue or is it retailers here being less willing to order stock and devote shelf space to something Wii U based?  ... but after seeing the success they've had, it is kind of bizarre that they haven't said that they're going to produce more of something that people clearly want.


I don't think that NoA is incompetent, but they are cautious to a fault about what (and how much) gets released for products outside of their main franchises. Anything that doesn't have huge sales expectations seems to be viewed with extreme caution.  From a business perspective that's probably not a bad thing, but it doesn't help collectors.


As you say, I have a hard time believing there won't be a restock given how quickly things sold out. Seems like they are leaving money on the table... but maybe they are ok with that?  Maybe they'd rather leave money on the table than produce too much?  Maybe they just want to create urgency to pad sales and have every intention of reprinting figures later?  Who knows!
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Offline Triforce Hermit

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #82 on: December 22, 2014, 07:57:53 AM »
The only ideas here are that they could have is that the cards will meets the same sales standards as the amiibos because everyone is clearly buying them for their functions. Or that they are lying to ensure stock is completely sold. One is incompetence, the other is, well, business.
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Offline lolmonade

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #83 on: December 22, 2014, 08:35:22 AM »
A lot of Nintendo/Amiibo fans don't understand that there's a fixed AND variable cost for every production run of a product like a toy. 
 
I assume these items are made in a mold.  Therefore, there's a set-up cost for the machinery to be set to make a Marth character, then there's also the cost of plastics, whatever processses take place in the molding process, labor,  and then packaging & distribution costs.  This is a very rough estimate from someone who knows a bit about manufacturing, but not explicitly about toys.
Let's say Nintendo decides to cater to fans and do a 10,000 PC run of Marth's as a last run.  Let's assume maybe a fixed cost of $50,000 to have everything set-up to do a production run, materials & labor amount to $2/figure, and shipping amounts to $1/figure.  That amounts to approx. $8/figure to have a production run of 10k toys from production to on-the-shelf.  This is the cost of the unit, no profit figured into this.
 
Nintendo probably has an idea of what profit margin they need on these for them to be considered profitable.  Let's work backwards from the $13/unit price to see what Nintendo would need to sell these at assuming they want a 30% profit margin.
Retailers have an average 40% markup from their cost for retail price.  Taking this percentage off the retail price, this means they need to purchase each Amiibo from Nintendo at a price point of $7.80/unit.  Let's also assume that Nintendo ideally wants to make a minimum profit margin of 30% per unit - this means they need to manufacture the amiibos at 30% less than what target or wal-mart would buy them at that $7.80 price point from, approx. $ 5.46/figure.
 
So under my unscientific scenario:
  • Nintendo's cost for producing a 10k run of Marths: $8/unit.
  • Price Nintendo needs these mfg to make 30% profit margin: $5.46/unit.
They could always spread that fixed cost over a larger production run, but how many people ACTUALLY want a Marth amiibo vs the loud online chatter?  And what's the risk of producing far too many of these and then Nintendo sitting on Marth stock they can't give away to the retailers?
 
It's easy to say "Nintendo's missing-out on all this profit", but if you have any innate manufacturing/supply management knowledge, along with undertstanding Nintendo as a business has to have a level of expected profit with each decision they make, it's not hard to understand why they may not reconsider doing a second run of these characters, especially if they're going to offer the same in-game functionality in a much cheaper collectable card version down the road.
 
 
 

Offline UncleBob

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #84 on: December 22, 2014, 08:52:52 AM »
but how many people ACTUALLY want a Marth amiibo vs the loud online chatter?

Not to mention, how many people want Marth because he's hard to get?
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Offline Ceric

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #85 on: December 22, 2014, 09:37:07 AM »
but how many people ACTUALLY want a Marth amiibo vs the loud online chatter?

Not to mention, how many people want Marth because he's hard to get?
Probably not as high as it is now but I would think Marth would actually be a solid seller considering the recent popularity of Fire Emblem and a lack of figures.

Why is Japan so well stocked?  Smaller Population, Less Logistical and Shipping Costs, Home Country, less competition, and probably higher profit margin.
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Offline Triforce Hermit

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #86 on: December 22, 2014, 09:45:31 AM »
I would credit that argument if it was Mario or any of those other figures that have like three hundred other variants. But Fire Emblem, Shulk, and Captain Falcon figures are nonexistent. Fire Emblem has a huge fan base now, Xenoblade is expanding very quickly thanks to Smash, and Captain Falcon is, well, Captain Falcon. They have very few available alternatives if they have any at all, but the fanbase that will buy it will eat it up like mad. So make a 2nd, 3rd, and possibly a 4th run if the demand is still there. Right now, we have some people buying about 20 figures at once so they can charge them for triple the price later on ebay. Would rather see that profit go to Nintendo then some douche on ebay. No, there is no guarantee on profit for a 3rd or 4th run, but right now there is profit to be made on a 2nd run for some of these figures.
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Offline lolmonade

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #87 on: December 22, 2014, 10:37:39 AM »
I would credit that argument if it was Mario or any of those other figures that have like three hundred other variants. But Fire Emblem, Shulk, and Captain Falcon figures are nonexistent. Fire Emblem has a huge fan base now, Xenoblade is expanding very quickly thanks to Smash, and Captain Falcon is, well, Captain Falcon. They have very few available alternatives if they have any at all, but the fanbase that will buy it will eat it up like mad. So make a 2nd, 3rd, and possibly a 4th run if the demand is still there. Right now, we have some people buying about 20 figures at once so they can charge them for triple the price later on ebay. Would rather see that profit go to Nintendo then some douche on ebay. No, there is no guarantee on profit for a 3rd or 4th run, but right now there is profit to be made on a 2nd run for some of these figures.

Fire Emblem: Awakening sold very well.  That said, Marth was only a character in the game in the form of Lucina taking his name for a while.  How many people outside of fans of Smash Brothers and longtime fans of Fire Emblem REALLY care about Marth?
 
Xenoblade is popular and well-regarded by those who are fans of large RPGs, but the fanbase who would buy Shulk are 1) Smash devotees, 2) Xenoblade fans, & 3) people who are super into collectables. 
 
The reason why you see piles of Mario, Pikachu, Yoshi, Kirby, and Donkey Kong on the shelf is because Nintendo expect those to have the long-reaching interest from those outside of their core gaming base.  These are the evergreen franchise characters they'll have longer-term plans for Amiibo because of all the cross-over games they're in.
 
Nintendo doesn't care about if you have to pay Mr. Ebay scalper $75 for a Marth or Villager figurine.  That doesn't factor into their business decisions.  They care about enough guaranteed demand to where if they go through the trouble of producing enough stock to sell at the profit margin they want, that they'll for sure sell-through all the stock because they don't want to be stuck with the remaining stock once the market is flooded with more Marth Characters than what the vocal minority actually want.

Offline ejamer

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #88 on: December 22, 2014, 12:08:08 PM »
lolmonade's posts take all the fun out of complaining because they are very reasonable and probably accurate.
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Offline Nile Boogie Returns

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #89 on: December 22, 2014, 02:42:22 PM »
Is it possible Nintendo just grossly underestimated demand for Amiibo? I would think they want to strike while the "iron is hot".




Also, now that Amiibo is a "hit", can I get my Diablo style dungeon crawler now? I still think while support in other franchises are awesome, Amiibo(s) need its own game. And leveling up in other games helps you in the main Amiibo game as well. (gonna need some kinda of "banking system" since the figures only support 1 save)

Offline MagicCow64

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #90 on: December 22, 2014, 03:50:26 PM »
So my brother went to the Nintendo World Store over the weekend for holiday lucre, and was disappointed to find only the common Amiibos available and no Wave 2. But when he was checking out with a consolation Samus he spotted a Little Mac behind the counter, maybe a return or stock an employee was trying to reserve, and snapped it up. And that was my Christmas present, currently going for $37.99 from Amazon sellers. And I of course opened it and killed the value because I need it to be as possible to minimize embarrassment.


We were excited to try out the Smash Bros. functionality, but after about two hours I came away pretty underwhelmed. I thought leveling the little mofos up would be an ongoing process, but after two hours of free-for-alls with two humans and two Amiibos, both hit max 50. They could handily beat us by the end, but otherwise aren't all that distinct from regular CPUs (though they seem to react weirdly to large gaps on stages). I'm not sure if I'll bother scanning MacArthur in again, as the only thing to do really is max out their stats by feeding them items and thus make them dominate even more. I was disappointed to find that you can't do co-op modes with your Amiibo, I think it would have helped us bond.

Offline RedBlue

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #91 on: December 22, 2014, 06:12:04 PM »
The one I really wanted from wave one was the villager. I had it on my hands but decided to get it later. That was a bad decision.

Offline Triforce Hermit

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #92 on: December 22, 2014, 07:49:59 PM »
I just don't want to fight for these damn figures. And I believe there is enough demand to sell a second reshipment of certain amiibos without having excess stock.

And I don't want fucking cards.
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Offline Nile Boogie Returns

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #93 on: December 22, 2014, 10:43:09 PM »
On second thought...**** it. I'll go a head and bite the bullet and buy Villager for $35.00  If by some chance they get cheaper, then I'll just be out of $20 which I would have spent on hookers and blow at the local Wendy's.

Offline Ceric

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #94 on: December 23, 2014, 08:54:52 AM »
On second thought...**** it. I'll go a head and bite the bullet and buy Villager for $35.00  If by some chance they get cheaper, then I'll just be out of $20 which I would have spent on hookers and blow at the local Wendy's.
Since your by there so much you should get one of the Frosty Key Chains for Wendy's Charity.  I must have saved at least $45 from the thing this year. Good ROI.
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Offline Triforce Hermit

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #95 on: December 24, 2014, 10:48:06 AM »
Shulk amiibos are no longer available on Gamestop's site. Link

Disappointing, but expected.
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Offline Louieturkey

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #96 on: December 24, 2014, 03:59:27 PM »
Shulk amiibos are no longer available on Gamestop's site. Link

Disappointing, but expected.

I wonder if you can still order them in store.

Offline pokepal148

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #97 on: December 24, 2014, 07:48:57 PM »
Shulk amiibos are no longer available on Gamestop's site. Link

Disappointing, but expected.

You got GameSTOPPED son. 8)

Offline Nile Boogie Returns

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #98 on: December 24, 2014, 10:25:07 PM »
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADbUgNp7YZJbg


I thought of this "Amiibo" thing like 8 months before they announced it. Can I get a "Lionel Hutz" lawyer type to plead my case? I'll settle the case outta court for a case of Gatorade, 3 Villager Amiibo and $15 in eShop credit.


(Also, is the plural of Amiibo the same as the singular?)
 





« Last Edit: December 24, 2014, 10:31:20 PM by Nile Boogie Returns »

Offline Ceric

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Re: Let's Talk Amiibo!
« Reply #99 on: December 25, 2014, 09:25:49 AM »
I got Fox and Link for Christmas.  Fox is definitely more detailed than Link.  That seems to be a trend.  The more mainstream the less detail of similar character types.

Also I never realized that Fox head get up looks like an NES accessory before.

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