The Odd Shortage of Amiibo
A business, no matter how long they have been in the market, can still make simple mistakes. Nintendo, a long-standing, well-known game company, for the past year has had many missed opportunitites to make extra profit through its extremely popular line of figurines, called amiibo. The craze for these figures is not only that they are fairly well made for their cheap price, but that they allow players to unlock new content and features within various Nintendo games. The novelty of this chracteristic bolsters the number of fans that desire to collect every single one. As Nintendo releases new amiibo in waves every few months, masses of people never cease in purchasing these figurines to complete their own collections. This is a very positive aspect for any business, unless the supply consistently cannnot keep up with demand.
Perhaps underestimating the popularity these figurines, Nintendo’s first wave of amiibo releases in November 2014 were bought up within the United States within the week. Some of these were found later on various online auction sites for at least twice, usually three times the amount of the figurines’ inital $12-$16 prices. Nintendo’s attempt to restock some of these amiibo was short lived as they were soon gobbled up and many fans were still left without particular amiibo they desired. Normally this would be taken as a sign to increase production to meet demand. Oddly enough, this trend continued for each wave of new ammibo released.
With the exception of a few of Nintendo’s key mascots, many of the amiibo that hit the market online are bought up in a matter of minutes. Similarly, within the half hour many of these would end up on auctions online, usually for prices starting at at least $45. For each wave for nearly a year to date, Nintendo has never had enough amiibo in stock to satisfy demand, causing amiibo collectors to seek out deals online amidst the many going for over $100.
What befuddles me amongst many fans is why Nintendo continues to have this shortage of amiibo. English auction sites such as eBay have constantly shown how much collectors are willing to pay above the market value for a small, 4 inch, plastic figure with an IR sensor. Most of the money going towards auctioned ammibo could go towards a figurine that is at least three times the size and of a much better quality, yet people are willing to pay, and Nintendo still will not increase their supply to profit on this craze they created.
Despite acknowledging this issue in a press release early this spring, the only reaction Nintendo has had is making more of their ammibo exclusive by only selling them on certain retailers’ sites. Being such a large company, Nintendo should have no trouble supplying more amiibo than it has been. This continued shortage practice only consistently demonstrates how collectors are willing to pay enormous sums above the market price to own one, small figurine. If Nintendo paid more attention to the buyers’ value of the amiibo and the number of consumers that are still waiting to obtain their own amiibo due to the shortage, perhaps they could respond accordingly and direct some of that auction money towards their own profits.
-Kairi700
Sources:
http://www.ibtimes.com.au/rare-gold-amiibos-sold-out-within-15-minutes-show-ebay-high-prices-1426095
http://kotaku.com/nintendo-admits-they-screwed-up-amiibo-promises-to-do-1702031465