The Amiibo turned out to be a huge boon for Nintendo's bottom line. The collectible figurines aren't just physical representations of popular entities and characters from Nintendo's historic franchises, they also unlock in-game goodies. Well, Sony seems to want to try its hand at the whole collectible figurine market, and will be doing so with some of PlayStation's most memorable brands.
GameStop has a section on the story for the new Totaku line of collectible figurines that are being sold exclusively at the brick and mortar retail giant. The section on the site features figurines based on some of Sony's most popular games for the PlayStation home consoles, including Bloodborne, Crash Bandicoot and of course, God of War.
The figures from Totaku also feature some characters from multiplatform titles as well, but most of the figures are based on franchises that helped shape the PlayStation brand and enabled it to become the largest home console leader in the world. For instance, there are figures for Heihachi Mishima from Tekken, even though the newer Tekken titles are now on PC and Xbox. Parappa from Parappa The Rapper makes an appearance, along with Sackboy from Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet.
Each of the figurines only cost $9.99, and will debut at GameStop retail outlets or can be ordered online. The pre-orders for the figurines are open now ahead of the March 23rd release date set to take place this spring.
The figures average in at around 10cm in height and feature a non-articulated fixed base so that you can display it with your own specialized plinth if you so wanted to. The characters fit onto a basic cross-shaped platform, so if you wanted a larger base, a specialized stand, or to fix the figures in a certain way, you can.
Obviously, the biggest difference between Totaku's figurines based on popular PlayStation gaming figures and Nintendo's Amiibo is that you won't get near-field communication support from the Totaku figurines. They're just there for display.
The Nintendo Amiibo are slightly more expensive because they can be used in a multitude of different games and have support for Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and the Nintendo Switch.
The Amiibo craze was enough to get the attention of enough people who enjoy collectibles and who also like adding something extra spicy to their games. This carryover into the Switch's lifespan with support for Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was, likely, enough to convince Sony to, at the very least, start working on putting out collectible figurines to test the market waters.
Maybe if things continue to go over well with the partnership with Totaku, we might even see Sony introduce NFC support in an upcoming console and turn the figurines into some sort of DLC-fitted toy that can be used with some of PlayStation's most popular brands, such as Uncharted or Bloodborne.
For now, there are only seven figurines available for pre-order over on the GameStop page. If they sell well enough maybe we'll see other figures based on characters from Heavenly Sword or Resistance, or maybe even The Last of Us.
