Nintendo Apologizes for Amiibo Hiccups, Promises Reissues

After countless fans voiced their frustrations about the amiibo line's horrific wave four launch, the House of Mario finally apologizes, promising to do better.

Last month, pre-orders began for Nintendo's fourth wave of amiibo figures, which included Charizard, Robin, Ness, Pac-Man, Lucina, Wario and a few Splatoon figures. Unfortunately, Nintendo, with its ongoing disconnection from its Western audiences, horribly misjudged how popular these figures were going to be. Since Nintendo is releasing an amiibo for just about every single member from the Super Smash Bros. roster and a few other first-party titles, the company wouldn't be able to constantly keep store shelves stocked with each type of figure. This means that certain figures would be hard to find, such as Marth and other fan favorite characters that Nintendo wasn't expecting to sell as well as its first-party figures (surprise, no one cares for the Wii-Fit Trainer).

Now, the amiibo craze has skyrocketed to the point where GameStop's entire website and nationwide register system crashed last month due to the sheer number of people trying to pre-order its fourth wave of figures. A majority of the people waiting in line at GameStop stores this day were unable to pre-order, with many of them waiting hours in line for the register system to reactivate, only to find out everything was sold out. Our own Jason Fanelli voiced his frustrations with the experiences in trying to complete his amiibo collection. Despite all the negativity and questions aimed towards Nintendo, the company has remained relatively quiet. Nintendo didn't have much to say in response to the frustrated customers who were unable to get what they wanted, until now.

Nintendo has finally commented on the amiibo situation via its official Facebook:

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.

Here's a simple solution, Nintendo: sell the figures on your official store. You guys like coins, right?

Mind you, this is the same company that horribly understocked its Wii U-GameCube controller adapter, despite how popular Super Smash Bros. was. It's starting to feel as if Nintendo doesn't even want all this money we're willing to throw at them. Nintendo could easily add amiibos to its online store and sell a plethora of figures, while still putting them on store shelves. Alas, this is the same company that still won't put SNES or Sega Genesis titles on the 3DS Virtual Console. No one is going to want amiibo cards; we want the actual figures and not that weird retro game demo system.