What used to be a reward for beating a game appears to have quietly become locked behind physical DLC.
There’s another angle the author didn’t touch on. Nintendo is gating this content not only behind the purchase of amiibo, but they’re also making it inaccessible to anyone who has a pre amiibo 3DS model. So for them this ends up being not a $15 price for content, but actually closer to $200.
I’m not personally bothered, because Metroid for me isn’t a game I play for an exacting mechanical challenge. These games normally don’t have hard modes and I’m fine with not having a hard mode in this one either. But for anyone who does feel like this stuff is important, they’re really kinda out of luck if they got on the 3DS train early.
Not to take away from your point, but you can get a 3DS NFC reader for non-Amiibo 3DSs that’s like $15-20. Still dumb, but less so.
Yeah it a problem for people who want to push their game to another level and they can’t cause there blocked by a weird pay wall.
Amiibos work best when:
Amiibos stink when:
To me, the selling point of Amiibos is that you can grab one of your favourite character and be assured that it’ll add a little something themed around that character to lots of different games (Mario Maker and Yoshi’s Woolly World are good examples of games that supported Amiibos this way). Having to buy an Amiibo as physical DLC that only affects a single game is the total opposite of that and I have no interest in it.
Amiibos were a mistake