New Stats Prove That Nintendo Amiibo Are More Popular Than Expected

Here’s something we already knew: Nintendo’s Amiibo are popular. But maybe how popular they are will surprise you. According to a recent report, the Big N has moved more than 40 million of those statuettes and cards combined.

Nintendo today released its Consolidated Financial Highlights, giving a pretty in-depth look at how the company’s many assets are performing.

While most of that document will make the average Joe scratch their head several times before falling asleep, there are a few pieces of info worth pointing out pertaining to those adorable Amiibos folks just can’t seem to get enough of.

According to the report, Nintendo has sold through a big 20.5 million Amiibo figures, plus another 21.5 million Amiibo cards. While those cards have only been available for a few months, they do sell for much cheaper, and with several in a pack as compared to the solo figurines.

You may remember that, last spring, Nintendo announced that it was unable to keep up with the high demand for Amiibo. At the time, only a handful of Amiibo had actually hit the market, most of which were crammed onto store shelves in small quantities. In short, Nintendo didn’t know how the gaming community would respond to their toy line and, rather than have a financial flop on their hands, they decided to put out a conservative number of figures sporting the likeness of Mario, Link, Samus and the rest of the crew.

As today’s report confirms, they had absolutely nothing to worry about. Folks are buying the things in droves and they don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

We find this kind of interesting, especially when you consider the limited functionality of Amiibo in comparison to similar products from the Skylanders, Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions lines. For starters, the figures are more like traditional toys, meaning kids can play with them even when they’re not playing the video game. Secondly, they plug into those video games in a meaningful fashion, such as appearing as playable characters, vehicles and the like.

Nintendo, however, is using the things more like a glorified memory card. You can store a fighter from Smash Bros. on an Amiibo, for instance, or unlock special content like with the upcoming Shovel Knight Amiibo. For the most part, you can’t pop an Amiibo on a portal and have Zelda appear in a mash-up game.

Sure, there’s a chance that such a game will appear somewhere down the road, but Amiibo have been out for over a year now and still no word of a game that really makes those collectible figures shine.

Not that Nintendo needs such a game, apparently. Amiibo are selling just fine as is.