Nintendo is working on its own plastic figurines that work with its first-party games, a la billion-dollar Skylanders franchise, according to reports from its investors meeting in Japan Thursday morning.
According to tweets from research analyst David Gibbons, who was attending Nintendo's presentation to investors following its quarterly earnings report, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata discussed NFC-enabled figurines of characters like Mario that could transfer data between several games.
Will launch figurine business called NFP- nfc featured platform, showed Mario figure across many games being used including saves— David Gibson (@gibbogame) May 8, 2014
NFP game and figures shown at E3, 3DS will also get IR NFP reader so figures can be used across WiiU and 3DS— David Gibson (@gibbogame) May 8, 2014
Nintendo also posted the official transcript of Iwata's talk in Japanese, and it contains some renderings of Mario figures.
The slides also show an IR reader that works with the 3DS handheld system.
There's an IR-based NFC reader/writer for #3DS for use w/ Nintendo Figurine Platform. http://t.co/IW8ko4i5Gv pic.twitter.com/vy6AiIUT1I— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) May 8, 2014
The company also revealed its first companion app during the presentation: Mario Kart TV. It would allow players to watch shared videos from the upcoming Mario Kart 8, as well as track their friends ratings. Mario Kart TV would work via a web interface on mobile and desktop.
Nintendo posted disastrous earnings Wednesday morning for its quarterly earnings report Wednesday, and said the Wii U had failed to miss its sales targets by significant numbers. NFC figures could be a strategy to revive the flagging sales.