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Zelda: Twilight Princess HD requires Wolf Link Amiibo to access a new dungeon
Have you been bitten by the Amiibo collecting bug yet? If not, Nintendo Co Ltd is still hoping you will be by forcing players to buy the new Wolf Link Amiibo in order to access a new dungeon being added to the upcoming HD remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii U.
Generally, the content unlocked by Nintendo Amiibo is relatively minor, such as opening new minigames or unlocking alternate character skins, so an entire Zelda dungeon would be a bit larger than the usual Amiibo content.
Nintendo’s Amiibo figures essentially function as physical keys to access downloadable content (DLC), unlocking new characters and minigames in various Wii U and 3DS games through an NFC chip embedded in the base of the toys.
With the Zelda series’ notoriously rabid fan base, it would be easy to assume that many would buy the new Amiibo figure anyway, and the new dungeon would only be more incentive to do so. Even if that were true, however, this content distribution model has a fatal flaw: Highly desired Amiibo go out of stock all the time.
When Amiibo launched in 2014, this sparked a collecting frenzy among Nintendo fans, and the Japanese company quickly discovered that it was having a difficult time meeting consumers’ insatiable demand for the video game-themed figures. Partly due to union disputes on the West Coast , the supply of Amiibo temporarily dried up, and some of the rarer figures began showing up on eBay at greatly inflated prices.
When pre-orders for new Amiibo became available on GameStop.com last year, the sudden spike in traffic actually managed to bring the website down, and GameStop Corp temporarily suspended the pre-orders until the furor died down.
Nintendo later apologized for the short supply of Amiibo.
“We’re trying to meet the demands of our fans and consumers by increasing the amount of amiibo we manufacture and ship to retail,” Nintendo said in a Facebook post at the time. “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.”
Demand will likely be high for the new Wolf Link Amiibo, so hopefully Nintendo will have learned from its past mistakes. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD is set to release on the Wii U on March 4, 2016.
Images courtesy of Nintendo Co Ltd
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