LiteralGrill
Smokin' Hot~
According to Nintendo's Australian news site, there will be a limited number of amiibos coming to Australia and New Zealand with some of these coming from other regions meaning they wont have Australian or New Zealand packaging. With a recent financial report from Nintendo showing only 3% of the 5.9 million amiibos shipped have gone to Australia that may seem like an odd choice, except that Australia has the highest sell-through rate of amiibo in the world at 90%.
The fact that these amiibos might have packaging from other countries is also very interesting especially with the current major port strike on the west coast that has been going on for the past few months that may be holding up not only amiibo shipments in the United States but New 3DS consoles as well since a majority of its products are made in China and the fastest shipping route from there is to the west coast where the strike is currently happening. According to Reuters this strike has affected 70% of products coming in from Asia. This leads to the possibility that instead of choking up even more amiibos at west coast ports they may be simply sending them to Australia to replenish their amiibo supply in a country that currently has such a high sell through rate.
Associated Press photo taken by Elaine Thompson showing a boat with goods just waiting to do something.
They also announced that on March 21st the amiibo collection would expand in those areas to include the new Super Mario Collection which includes new models of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, and Bowser as well as the brand new Toad amiibo. The crossover amiibo characters from both Smash and the Super Mario Collections will have the same functionality in all compatible games on the Wii U as well as Smash 3DS. Several other amiibo will be joining the lineup in April as well including Robin, Lucina, Charizard, PAC-MAN, Ness, and Wario. It will be interesting to see if any other news comes out soon related to the large scarcity of popular amiibos and the scarcity of them in places like Australia and New Zealand as well.
SmashCapps likes amiibos but only has a few of his own. Follow him on twitter to discuss the amiibo collection phenomenon.