Amiibo figurines, serving as another holiday work horse for Nintendo, seem to have surpassed all expectations.
This collection of characters, alongside Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, has helped move the innovative console to many more households during this holiday season.
With the release of the November sales numbers for hardware and software, Amiibo was revealed to have sold approximately 710,000 units over the ten-day period of their availability in the same month. The top three sellers, according to Nintendo themselves, were Link, Mario, and Pikachu in that order.
Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U was another hot seller with enough units moved to be the third highest property sold in the month when combined with the 3DS version.
Although no sale numbers were officially released, Nintendo themselves said that the sale for Super Smash Bros. were on par with Amiibo numbers, marking November as the best month of hardware sales since the system’s initial launch. On top of that, software sales were up 90% from last year’s rush, pointing to a lot of games being attached to these sold systems. It should also be noted that these reports cover sales in America alone.
Amiibo seems to be just getting started with the line’s rapid popularity. Characters such as Marth, Villager and Wii Fit Trainer have all but disappeared from stores with supply lines stalling until after the holidays while another wave of figures, including Luigi, Little Mac and Zelda, is rumored to be coming December 19th. Waves three and four of Amiibo, schedule to arrive in early 2015, are already running out of pre-order stock with characters such as Meta Knight, King Dedede, Shulk, Toon Link and Sonic already being claimed en masse.
Economic analysts are also pegging Amiibo as a possible billion dollar source of revenue for Nintendo. A recent Bloomberg report cites this line of figures, Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart 8 as prime factors in the game company’s strategy, and expects Nintendo’s profits to triple from last year as a result.
This Amiibo hype is yet another reason 2015 is looking like a banner year for Nintendo.
(Source: Wii U Daily 1, 2)
