Nintendo Formally Apologizes for Amiibo Failure

If you’re a Nintendo fan and a sucker for figurines, than god help you, because the release of the Amiibo has proven to be nothing short of a disaster for both Nintendo and its customers. While demand for the electronic figures is certainly high, Nintendo has been doing a hard time keeping up, which has led to shortages, information blackouts, and exorbitantly expensive Amiibo sales over Amazon and Ebay — anyone want to buy a Villager for $225?

Point is, Nintendo has dropped the ball in a lot of respects, and today (seemingly out of the blue) they contacted Kotaku with a written apology... a bit odd for the House of N, but appreciated.

Here’s the letter in full.

“We appreciate the enthusiasm that our fans continue to show toward amiibo. Sales for the product have exceeded our expectations. We understand how frustrating it can be at times if consumers are unable to find certain figures, and we apologize for that.

We’re trying to meet the demands of our fans and consumers by increasing the amount of amiibo we manufacture and ship to retail. We may continue to see consumer demand outpace supply levels for certain characters at times, but we will do our best to prevent that from happening.

As our library of amiibo continues to grow, some figures will be easier to find than others. We are constantly looking for the opportunity to reissue amiibo and are already making plans to bring back some currently out-of-stock amiibo figures. Stay tuned for details.

Nintendo plans to make it easier for consumers to know when new amiibo are on the way, through Nintendo press announcements, timely updates on our social media channels and working closely with retailers.

We remain committed to keeping amiibo affordable and easy to access as a platform to enhance game-play experiences. These plans include Animal Crossing amiibo cards that will become available by the end of 2015, and a free-to-download app for Wii U called amiibo tap: Nintendo’s Greatest Bits that launched on April 30, 2015, that lets consumers enjoy playable scenes from certain NES and Super NES games with amiibo.”

Now, Nintendo isn’t entirely at fault for the Amiibo-gate, or whatever we wind up calling this; there’s been a labor strike on the west coast docks that have been making shipping anything from Japan a nightmare, but Nintendo clearly has SOME fault, at least; otherwise they wouldn’t have needed this letter.

Still. Appreciate the thought, Nintendo. Looking forward to it.