Rosalina amiibo is going, going, gone

The Target exclusive amiibo for the Rosalina and Luma characters is severely limited edition, with pre-orders running out weeks before the figure was released. The amiibo hit store shelves yesterday, and Nintendolife is reporting that once those figures sell out--which has undoubtedly already happened--there won't be any more.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on one but I had to get up pretty early and head out in some nasty freezing rain to do it. Amazingly, there were already over a dozen people lined up at the door waiting for Target to open when I got there.

This just drives my frustration with Nintendo and amiibo even further. This figure was on shelves for all of an hour before they all sold out, potentially forever, until further notice. Retailer exclusive figures are already a sore point but producing such tiny quantities is just going to bite Nintendo in the butt, because they're missing out on guaranteed profits.

One of the security guys at Target told me one of the people who showed up to get the Rosalina figure was a scalper; he already had twelve Rosalina amiibo and was just going to re-sell them online for a huge mark-up. If there's one thing big video game publishers hate it's the secondary market, because they don't see a penny of that re-sell money. So I don't understand why Nintendo isn't meeting the demand for figures like Wii Fit Trailer and Villager, much less popular Mario series players like Rosalina. All of that scalper money could be going into their coffers, if only they'd manufacture enough figures to meet demand.

Amiibo has been a surprising success, selling over 5.7 million units since the figurines launched. I understand that Nintendo might have been conservative with their initial production orders, considering how disappointing overall Wii U sales have been for the last couple years. But with rolling shortages of the figures, scalpers making a killing and near constant complaints from the fan community, it's safe to assume the demand is there, especially for more obscure characters. Imagine how many more amiibo Nintendo could sell, if only they'd meet that demand?

Source: Nintendolife