Super Smash Bros 4 Reported to Use Skylanders Style Figurines

If you aren't familiar with the Skylanders games, they were the pioneers of a genre now being called "Toys to Life". You purchase an actual figure and by placing the figure on a USB connected base, the character is then unlocked in the video game. Disney Infinity has also been hugely successful and is gear up to releasing the Marvel comics based Disney Infinity 2.0. Remember when you used to have to use your imagination to play with toys? Kids have it so easy these days...
 
Nintendo was aware of this game genre when designing the Wii U- giving the Wii U gamepad an underutilized feature called Near Fear Communication or NFC for short. To this day there has only been one game on the system that uses NFC, and that was Pokemon Rumble U... which was pretty universally panned and only supported by the most diehard poke-fans. 
 

 
If the recent comments by Nintendo France's Marketing Director, Stephan Bole, are to be believed- then the tech will be used properly in the upcoming Super Smash Bros 4 for Wii U. This follows previous comments from Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, that there would be a game that uses NFC shown at E3. Smash Bros is a pretty obvious choice, since the series' inception on the N64, the premise has always been a toybox on Nintendo characters that come to life and fight. 
 
There are some concerns for what this could mean for Smash 4, since there is a dedicated competitive scene. Having certain characters playable only by purchasing a figurine could be very off-putting for tournament players. Considering that they have added a "for glory" mode for competitive online play and are holding an invitation pro Smash 4 tournament at E3... I don't think Nintendo is out to upset that group of fans. The figures will most likely serve as assist trophies or alternate costumes that don't affect the core competitive game. 
 
E3 is only a couple weeks away, so we'll find out soon enough. Also this morning, Sakurai revealed that Ike would be a returning character- this time resembling his appearance from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. That brings the character roster up to 30, with more characters yet to be revealed... particularly a Namco guest character (since they are co-developing the game). It should also be noted the NFC features have not been mentioned for the Nintendo 3DS version of the game yet, and the device won't support NFC until sometime next year.