Satoru Iwata announced in a recent financial results briefing that the company will be releasing Near Field Communications (NFC) figures that will be compatible with a variety of Nintendo games by the end of this year. The president explained that the variety and popularity of Nintendo characters makes them perfectly suited to a Skylanders-esque figurine campaign. Since the Wii U GamePad has an NFC reader built in, figures will be a natural fit, but there are plans to add the functionality to the Nintendo 3DS family of systems sometime next year.
Most interestingly, Nintendo will be announcing some of the upcoming NFC-compatible games at this year’s E3. Nintendo will kick off the show with the Nintendo Digital Event, which airs Tuesday, June 10 at 9:00am PT. Undoubtedly, this broadcast will give gamers the first glimpse of how Nintendo plans to use NFC figures to strengthen their brand and add gameplay variety to their IPs.
