If you have kids, you almost certainly know about Skylanders and Disney Infinity by now, those videogames that also want to sell you physical figurines that have been designed specifically to maximise your kids’ nagging, begging and pleading.
Well, according to Wired Nintendo is going to bring out its own version of those figurines next year for your kids to go nuts over, with physical models of characters like Mario and Luigi to be made available for purchase.
And yes, they will need a small pedestal to let you import the characters directly into whatever games support them on both the 3DS and Wii U consoles, except Nintendo’s version will use the Near Field Communications (NFC) technology built into the Wii U console’s controller and infrared for the 3DS, making their pedestals entirely wireless.
Right now Nintendo is calling the project Nintendo Figurine Platform, or NFP. Wired says the new NFP figurines will be unveiled at E3 in June based on comments Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata made to investors at a recent briefing, the same briefing where the company’s dismal 2013 financials were announced.
Parents can breathe a small sigh of relief, however, because Iwata also said at the briefing that the figures won’t be bound to a single game or genre and will instead work with a variety of games. So no need to buy the same character several times for different games, then.
Kotaku readers, on receiving the news, have broadly supported the idea as many of them said they enjoy collecting figurines even if they don’t play the games they’re attached to. Since Nintendo is a company with a 40-year history and a stable of characters emblazoned into the consciousness of millions of gamers the world over, this could prove a lucrative move even if Nintendo only makes money from the figurines themselves. Clearly that’s what Nintendo is hoping given the company’s terrible financial performance over the past few years.
E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo) happens between the 10th and 12th of June and will have all of the juicy details, so check back here around that time for more.
[Via – Wired.com]
