Nintendo’s letting an indie studio make its own Amiibo figure. And that could mean we’ll see a whole new bunch of the popular interactive figures which are proving a big earner for the Japanese gaming giant.
Nintendo recently announced a new interactive Amiibo figure for the indie platformer Shovel Knight, compatible with both the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game. It’ll open up new features in the game, including cooperative multiplayer. But it turns out that the maker of Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games, is actually responsible for designing and creating the figure, right down to the packaging. Yacht Club’s getting the factory that makes the figures for the popular toy/game hybrid Disney Infinity to produce the new Amiibo.
The fact that Nintendo’s happy to license production of an Amiibo to a third-party studio potentially opens the door for other indie and third-party games to get their own Amiibos — maybe like the ones we suggested the other day.
“We’re basically licensing the Amiibo technology from Nintendo,” Yacht Club’s Sean Velasco told Destructoid, “and they’ve been overseeing it every step of the way: from the design, to how the Amiibo functions in the game, to making sure that it was all just perfect in every way.”
“But we’re the ones that are dealing with the manufacturing and distribution; we’re the ones that are talking with the toy and sculpture people. Even [with] things like the packaging.”